AKSPERE 

iHpH ANT |jj. r 
ENICEO^gts 





Class _ TR _L%JLS 

Book ,Ai Jfeo 

Copyright If 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY TEXT-BOOKS 



EDITED BY 

A. F. NIGHTINGALE, Ph.D., LL.D. 

SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS 
FORMERLY SUPERINTENDENT OF HIGH SCHOOLS, CHICAGO 



TWENTIETH CENTURY TEXT-BOOKS 



SHAKSPERE'S 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 



EDITED 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 



BY 

RICHARD JONES, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF LITERATURE IN VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY 
AUTHOR OF THE GROWTH OF THE IDYLLS OF THE KING 

AND 

FRANKLIN T. BAKER, A. M. 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN TEACHERS' COLLEGE 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 




NEW YORK 
APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1903 





/7f # s ^ r 




./)^ J7r 


3,' 




Tv o Copies Received 




JAN 13 1S03 




flCopyngnt Entry 
CU3S ^ XXo. No 




SO 1 X °\ 

copy a.v 





Copyright, 1903 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Published January, 1903 



cO 

PEEFACE 






- 6 

In this edition of The Merchant of Venice there is 
f. given the customary linguistic explanatory matter, but 
w' the chief stress is laid upon the necessary question of the 
play, viz., the attitude toward Shylock that Shakspere 
intended the reader or spectator to take. The reader of 
The Merchant of Venice who has dipped here and there 
into the literature of comment on the play has doubtless 
been bewildered by the irreconcilable views of learned 
expositors as to all the characters in the play. An at- 
tempt is here made to suggest a clue, this clue being the 
difference in the attitude of these expositors toward Shy- 
lock and the effect of their attitude toward Shylock on 
their attitude toward all the other characters in the play 
— the theme so overwhelmingly, not to say crushingly, 
developed by Robert Browning in The Ring and the Booh. 

A treatment of the play such as is here given, on the 
part of young readers even, is suggested to preparatory 
schools by the character of the college-entrance examina- 
tions on this play often set, examples of which are given 
at the close of the Exercises in Interpretation, pages 165 
to 174. It is hoped that the young reader will be taught 
answers for deliverance, or at least assisted thereto, by the 
discussion of this subject in the Introduction to the play 
here given, and that the Exercises in Interpretation will 
prove suggestive and stimulating in directing the young 
reader to a method of study suggested by colleges and 
universities to preparatory schools by the character of the 

5 



6 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

questions set at college-entrance examinations, and indeed 
directly encouraged, as for example by Harvard's recom- 
mendation, " Pupils should of course be made to under- 
stand what they read as they go along ; but attention 
should be fixed, not on unimportant details of substance 
or of style, but on the significance and spirit of the whole. 
In studying a tragedy of Shakspere, for example, far less 
time should be given to the discussion of details than to 
the march of events, the play of character, the main lines 
of the plot, the significance of the whole as a work of 
genius." 

Acknowledgments are due to the authors and pub- 
lishers of the works quoted in the following pages, espe- 
cially to the illustrious Shakspere scholar, of whose worth 
the wide world is not ignorant, whose Variorum editions 
(J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia) are an exhaust- 
less treasure store to students and interpreters of Shak- 
spere, a treasure store, which, like the wealth of the good 
Antonio, lies all unlocked to their occasions. The works 
of many others, referred to in the following pages, are 
also invaluable — stimulating to approval or disapproval. 
Every reader who is attempting a somewhat careful study 
of The Merchant of Venice, or of any other Shaksperean 
play, will have at hand, as a matter of course, if possible, 
a copy of Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar (The Mac- 
millan Company). 



CONTENTS 



Introduction : PAGK 
"Look here, upon this picture, and on this" ... 9 
First interpretation — Shylock a wolfish, bloody, inex- 
orable DOG 10 

Second interpretation — Shylock the depositary of the 

vengeance of a race 12 

Third interpretation — Shylock conceived of essentially 
in the anti-Jewish spirit of Marlowe's Jew of 
Malta, but humanized 17 

The effect of the first and second interpretations on 

the reader's attitude toward shylock's antagonists 18 

The difficulty in the third interpretation — Shylock 

humanized, but to what extent ? 24 

a method of interpretation suggested — the play to be 
interpreted by the feeling toward one another of 
the characters of the play ...... 30 

The play in the light of its age— Shylock in Shak- 

spere's day 43 

Some actors of Shylock 47 

The letter of Herr Ernst von Possart, director of 

the Munich Court Theater 50 

now make your choice — some god direct your judgement 51 
The Merchant of Venice, text and foot-notes ... 57 

Notes 157 

Exercises in interpretation 165 

7 



THE MERCHANT OP VENICE 



INTBODUCTION 

"Look Here, upon This Picture, and on This" 

The cry of Hamlet to his mother in the closet-scene, 
" Look here, upon this picture, and on this," rises easily 
to the lips of one busied with the literature of comment 
on The Merchant of Venice. For interpreters of the play 
differ greatly in their attitude toward Shylock — and their 
attitude toward Shylock influences greatly, as a matter 
of course, their attitude toward the other characters of 
the play. Shylock is, indeed, according to the exposition 
of many learned judges, in reality the hero of the play — 
as he is, for example, to the editor of the great English 
Dictionary of National Biography, who has of late writ- 
ten, " For Shylock (not the merchant Antonio) is the 
hero of the play, and the main interest culminates in the 
Jew's trial and discomfiture." 1 While, on the contrary, 
Gervinus, in his Shakespeare Commentaries, has entered a 
vigorous protest against the ' lowness ' and ' madness ' 
that have gone so far as " to make on the stage a martyr 
and hero out of this outcast of humanity." So also to 
the most honored of Shaksperean scholars, of whose 
worth the wide world is not ignorant, Shylock is (up to a 

l A Life of William Shakespeare, Sidney Lee, The Macmillan 
Company, New York, 1899, p. 68. 

2 9 



10 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

certain point) " simply a cruel and vindictive creditor." 
And this incomparable Shakspere scholar is clearly con- 
vinced that " this is not a 'tendenz-drama,' wherein is 
infused a subtle plea of toleration for the Jews." 1 

So opposite, then, are the points of view from which 
the characters of the play are at times presented, both in 
literary criticism and upon the stage, that the reader — 
before making for himself a final choice, before declaring 
precipitately, 

" Deliver rne the key : 
Here do I choose, and thrive I as I may ! " — 

might well, quite in accord with the spirit of Portia's 
plea to Bassanio, lest he do choose wrong, suffer him- 
self to be detained ' some month or two ' in a survey of 
the field of criticism concerning this play, with an open 
mind looking meanwhile here upon this picture and on 
this, and looking ever, as a matter of course, upon the 
text as well from which these pictures are, more or less 
justifiably, drawn. 

First Interpretation — Shylock a Wolfish, Bloody, 
Inexorable Dog 

Of the various interpretations of the character of Shy- 
lock one makes him throughout a mere bloodthirsty vil- 
lain ; a stony adversary, an inhuman wretch ; a misbe- 
liever, cut-throat dog ; a dog Jew ; the most impenetrable 
cur that ever kept with men. In the downfall of this 
* damn'd, inexorable dog,' whose desires are wolfish, bloody, 
starved, and ravenous, even though the downfall be brought 
about by means of a palpable legal quibble, they wholly 
rejoice, agreeing with Bassanio that to do this great 

1 The [Variorum] Merchant of Venice, Horace Howard Furness, 
J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, p. 223. 



INTRODUCTION 11 

right it is quite justifiable to do a little wrong, 1 if one 
may thereby curb this cruel devil of his will. And 
untroubled by any recognition of some right in wrong, of 
humanity in inhumanity, on the part of Shylock, they 
give their sympathies unreservedly to his antagonists in 
the play ; they are content with the good Antonio's 
' expectoratory method ' of manifesting his distaste for 
this particular member of the Hebrew race ; they take 
unalloyed delight in Jessica's marriage out of her race 
and religion, offering excuses for " the dry eyes — nay, 
laughing lips — with which she departs " ; they even pass 
lightly over her robbery of her father's jewels and the 
exchange of her dead mother's betrothal ring for a mon- 
key, and, protesting that she is daughter neither to his 
manners nor his blood, with Gratiano they exclaim admir- 
ingly, " by my hood, a Gentile and no Jew." 

The readers who thus interpret the play pay little 
heed to the touches by which, to others, Shakspere has 
humanized the character of Shylock and made his desire 
for revenge, if not admirable, yet, fierce as it is, compre- 
hensible at least. And, far from being offended by what 
some of the less rigorous souls of a debile age have dis- 



1 " As long as Shylock was held to be a wolfish, bloody, inexora- 
ble dog, it made but little difference how he was defeated or his 
victim saved ; a Jew had no rights which a Christian was bound to 
respect. Even charming, gentle Mrs. Inchbald believed that Shake- 
speare's purpose in writing the play was to 'hold up the Jew to 
detestation,' and such undoubtedly was the general impression cre- 
ated by the ' snarling malignity ' of Macklin's Shylock [1741]." — 
Furness, p. 403. 

Mrs. Inchbald's opinions in regard to dramatic literature were 
evidently esteemed by her contemporaries, as she edited with bio- 
graphical and critical remarks three collections of plays, aggregating 
forty-two volumes, in addition to writing nineteen dramas of her 
own, some of which were for a time, according to the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, ' very successful.' 



12 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

praised as the contemptuously brutal treatment accorded 
to Shylock and his race by the good Antonio and his 
friends, they are like with Antonio to spit on him again 
and spurn him too, and with Gratiano to exclaim, " 0, 
be thou damn'd, inexorable dog ! " 

Second Interpretation — Shylock the Depositary 
of the Vengeance of a Eace 

In striking contrast with this traditional interpreta- 
tion is the more recent view of those who, passing lightly 
by or at least accounting for 1 the pitilessness of Shylock's 
desire for revenge, cannot pass lightly by the injustice, 
indeed what appears to them the inhumanity, of the 
treatment of Shylock and his race by the Jew-hating but 
otherwise noble-minded Antonio, who took every oppor- 
tunity to void his rheum upon Shylock's beard, to spurn 

1 [In Shylock] " we see the remains of a great and noble nature, 
out of which all the genial sap of humanity has been pressed by 
accumulated injuries." — Shakespeare : His Life, Art, and Charac- 
ters, H. N. Hudson, Ginn and Company, Boston, p. 291. 

" Chronologically, the earliest voice, as far as I know, which was 
raised in defence of Shylock and in denunciation of the illegality of 
his defeat is that of an Anonymous Contributor to a volume Essays 
by a Society of Gentlemen at Exeter, printed in 1792. The Essay is 
called ' An Apology for the Character and Conduct of Shylock,' and 
is signed ' T. 0.' The Essayist's plea for Shylock is, that if his char- 
acter is cruel it was made so by ill-treatment ; that the derision with 
which his daughter's flight was treated was calculated to embitter 
the sweetest nature, let alone that of an outcast of society : that his 
Mosaic law authorized him to exact ' an eye for an eye, a tooth for a 
tooth ' ; that money-making was the sole occupation that the laws 
suffered him to follow," etc.— Furness, p. 403. 

Professor Lounsbury refers in his Shakespeare as a Dramatic 
Artist, p. 214, to the contention, in 1777, of " a member of the Uni- 
versity of Oxford " that The Merchant of Venice and Measure for 
Measure are really tragedies. It would appear, then, that, as early 
as 1777, to this member of the University of Oxford the treatment of 
Shylock in the trial-scene was not altogether satisfactory. 



INTRODUCTION 13 

him and spit upon his Jewish gaberdine — as much for 
hate of Shylock's ' sacred nation ' as for use of what was 
his own. " Antonio," says Brandes, 1 for example, " has 
insulted and baited Shylock in the most brutal fashion on 
account of his faith and his blood." And Brandes adds 
further that with the treatment Shylock has suffered he 
could not but become what he is. " Is there any cause in 
nature," asks Hales, 2 " that makes these hard hearts ? " 
And his reply in substance is that the Christian who 
looks frankly and faithfully at this work will not find 
matter for exultation but only for shame and sadness. 
Shylock has been made the hard, savage, relentless crea- 
ture we see him by long and cruel oppression. He inher- 
ited a nature embittered by centuries of insult and out- 
rage. ' Sufferance ' had been and was the badge of all 
his tribe. 

The character and deeds of Shylock looked on thus 
acquire to these interpreters new significance. He is no 
longer to them a mere individual, possessed by a fierce 
hate sprung from bargains thwarted or from individual 
wrongs — friends cooled, enemies heated. Again and 
again he is reviled as a dog Jew. He thus becomes the 
representative of a race — of a shamefully wronged race, 
as may perhaps appear to the interpreters under con- 
sideration. 

" In the Shylock of Shakespeare," Professor Louns- 
bury of Yale has said, 3 " is concentrated the wrath of a 

1 William Shakespeare, George Brandes, The Macmillan Com- 
pany, New York, 1899. 

2 J. W. Hales, The Athenmum, 15 December, 1877. 

3 Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, Thomas R. Lounsbury, 
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1901, p. 338. 

The reader will not, as a matter of course, assume that the whole 
point of view of any commentator is given in a single quotation. 

Professor Lounsbury's chief care here is not to justify Shylock, 



14 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

race turning upon its oppressors— a race conscious of the 
importance of the part it has played in the past, with its 
long line of law-givers and prophets to which all nations 
turn, equally conscious of the misery it has endured and 
is continuing to endure in the present. As it has been 
great in suffering, so will it be great in vengeance. En- 
treaties are useless ; threats are mere empty breath. Pity 
will not soften the heart nor obloquy cause it to yield." 

Professor Boas of Oxford has written of Shylock, 
" The magnificent outburst in which he vindicates against 
a brutal fanaticism the essential equality of human con- 
ditions in Jew and Christian is born of the blood and 
tears of centuries of martyrdom : it is the exceeding bitter 
cry, not so much of the solitary usurer as of the entire 
Hebrew race turning on its bed of pain." * 



but to come fairly off in his purpose of illustrating the ' art ' with 
which Shakspere makes us reconciled to the conclusion of the trial- 
scene — the greater the difficulty, the greater the art. In this case 
1 the task set before the poet was one of peculiar difficulty ' . . . " For 
in spite of the evil repute in which the Jewish race had been held for 
centuries, Shakespeare could not but have felt that in following the 
story out to its conclusion — a conclusion which was probably as well 
known to the audience as to himself — he could hardly fail to outrage 
to a certain extent our latent natural sense of justice by a result 
which purports to be in strictest accordance with justice. Whatever 
may have been the guilt and bloodthirstiness of Shylock, one cannot 
get entirely over the impression that he is a hardly used man." The 
more noteworthy then is the art of the poet, who — though he shows 
us Shylock ' exalted by wrath,' ' the wrath of a race turning upon its 
oppressors,' and by " that sublimity of hate which awes us by its 
intensity, and gives to malignity a character almost of grandeur " — 
yet " reconciles us [and the wonder of it, the art of it — it was a 
task of ' peculiar difficulty,' requiring ' extraordinary skill ' — yet the 
poet shows us that ' which alone ' reconciles us] to the result of the 
trial, which in one sense is an utter travesty of justice." 

1 Shakspere and His Predecessors, F. S. Boas, Charles Scribner's 
Sons, New York, 1896, p. 226. 



INTRODUCTION 15 

In the Jahrbuch of the Shakespeare Society of Ger- 
many, Herr Honigman has said, " Here it is that Shy- 
lock figures as the deputy and avenger of his whole 
shamefully maltreated race. In his tones we hear the pro- 
test, crying to heaven, of human rights trodden under 
foot, against the love of humanity paraded by the hypo- 
critical mouths of his oppressors ; and if his towering 
revenge mounts to fanaticism, it is verily of a different 
stamp to the fanaticism of usury and greed which the 
critics are fain to find in his character." 

And a Frenchman, Francois Victor Hugo, a son of the 
author of Les miserables, has written in like manner of 
this scene, " This sublime imprecation is the most elo- 
quent plea that the human voice has ever dared to utter 
for a despised race. Whatsoever be the denouement, it is 
hereby justified. Let Shylock be as implacable as he 
may, assuredly he will no more than equal his instruction. 
Even granting that he obtains it, a pound of Antonio's 
flesh will never outweigh, in the scales of reprisal, the 
millions of corpses heaped in the Christian shambles by a 
butchery f 1 ] of thirteen centuries." 

In a similar vein has expressed himself the celebrated 
song-writer and critic, Heine, whose literary work, begun 
in Germany, closed in France, and of whom we read in 
the Encyclopcedia Britannica, " No German writer since 

1 " It was not very long since Jews had been forced to choose be- 
tween kissing the crucifix and mounting the faggots ; and in Stras- 
burg, in 1439, nine hundred of them had in one day chosen the latter 
alternative. -. It is strange to reflect, too, that just at the time when, on 
the English stage, one Mediterranean! Jew was poisoning his daugh- 
ter, and another whetting his knife to cut his debtor's flesh, thousands 
of heroic and enthusiastic Hebrews in Spain and Portugal, who, after 
the expulsion of the three hundred thousand at the beginning of the 
century, had secretly remained faithful to Judaism, were suffering 
themselves to be tortured, flayed, burnt alive by the Inquisition, 
rather than forswear the religion of their race."— Brandes, p. 165. 



16 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

Goethe and Schiller has excited so much interest through- 
out Europe." In regard to Shylock, Heine, himself of 
Hebrew descent, has written, 

" When thou comest to Venice and wanderest through 
the Doge's palace, ... far more than of all such his- 
torical persons, thou thinkest in Venice of Shakespeare's 
Shylock, . . . 

" At least I, wandering hunter after dreams that I am, 
I looked round everywhere on the Rialto to see if I could 
not find Shylock. I could have told him something that 
would have pleased him — namely, that his cousin, Herr 
von Shylock in Paris, had become the mightiest baron in 
Christendom, invested by her Catholic Majesty with that 
Order of Isabella which was founded to celebrate the 
expulsion of the Jews and Moors from Spain. But I 
found him nowhere on the Eialto, and I determined to 
seek my old acquaintance in the Synagogue. The Jews 
were just then celebrating their Day of Atonement, and 
they stood enveloped in their white talars, with uncanny 
motions of the head, looking almost like an assemblage 
of ghosts. There the poor Jews had stood, fasting and 
praying, from earliest morning ; — since the evening be- 
fore they had taken neither food nor drink, and had 
previously begged pardon of all their acquaintances for 
any wrong they might have done them in the course of 
the year, that God might thereby also forgive them their 
wrongs — a beautiful custom, which, curiously enough, is 
found among this people, strangers though they be to 
the teaching of Christ. 

" Although I looked all around the Synagogue, I no- 
where discovered the face of Shylock. And yet I felt he 
must be hidden under one of those white talars, praying 
more fervently than his fellow-believers, looking up with 
stormy, nay frantic wildness, to the throne of Jehovah, 
the hard God-King. I saw him not. But towards even- 
ing, when, according to the Jewish faith, the gates of 
Heaven are shut, and no prayer can then obtain admit- 
tance, I heard a voice, with a ripple of tears that were 
never wept by eyes. It was a sob that could only come 
from a breast that held in it all the martyrdom which, 
for eighteen centuries, had been borne by a whole tor- 



INTRODUCTION 17 

tured people. It was the death-rattle of a soul sinking 
down dead tired at heaven's gates. And I seemed to 
know the voice, and I felt that I had heard it long ago, 
when, in utter despair, it moaned out, then as now, 
' Jessica, my girl ! ' " 

The interpretation put upon Shylock by the Jews of 
to-day is doubtless fairly stated by Eabbi Lewinthal, 1 
" This is the wail of the Jew uttered for the centuries. 
This is the cry that went up from Egypt, from the So- 
man amphitheatre, from the dungeons of the Spanish 
Inquisition. We hear its echo all through the Dark Ages ; 
and the genius of Shakspere voiced it as it had never 
been voiced before— or since. . . . Shylock is a man more 
sinned against than sinning, whom the inhumanity of the 
whole world has made inhuman. Long brooding over the 
shameful treatment of his people has marred his char- 
acter and dried up the founts of tenderness in his bosom." 

Third Interpretation — Shylock conceived of es- 
sentially ik the Anti-Jewish Spieit oe Mar- 
lowe's Jew oe Malta, but humanized 

Occupying middle ground between these two extremes 
is the interpretation which regards Shylock as essentially 
the conventional avaricious, bloodthirsty Jew, a neigh- 
bour and near bred to Marlowe's monster, the Jew of 
Malta, but humanized by what Boas has called Shak- 
spere's ' almost superhuman, plastic power ' — humanized 
sufficiently to win for him, in certain scenes especially, a 
measure— a large measure it may be— of the reader's sym- 
pathy, but not enough to justify the interpretation given 
above, which makes Shylock and not Antonio the hero of 
the play. 

1 Isidore Lewinthal, Rabbi Congregation Ohavai Sholom, Nash- 
ville, Tenn. 



18 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

This interpretation, as given in Ward's History of 
English Dramatic Literature, 1 is as follows, 

"... that the two plays [The Merchant of Venice and 
The Jeiv of Malta'] are, so far as their main subject is 
concerned, essentially written in the same spirit, I cannot 
hesitate in affirming. It is, I am convinced, only modern 
readers and modern actors who suppose that Shakspere 
consciously intended to arouse the sympathy of his audi- 
ence in behalf of the Jew. The sympathy which, not- 
withstanding, is aroused, is in truth merely the adven- 
titious result of the unconscious tact with which the poet 
humanised the character. In both Shakspere's and Mar- 
lowe's plays the view inculcated is, that on the part of a 
Jew fraud is the sign of his tribe, whereas on the part of 
Christians counter-fraud, though accompanied by violence, 
is worthy of commendation. This I cannot but regard as 
the primary effect of the whole of either play. . . . 

" The artistic difference between the plays needs no 
comment. The psychological distinction in the concep- 
tion of the two principal characters lies, not in the nature 
of the elements out of which they are compounded — 
avarice, cruelty, revengefulness, with no softening ele- 
ment but that of paternal love, and this only till it is 
quenched in the sense of a daughter's desertion — but in 
the way in which these elements are combined. The art 
of Shakspere is immeasurably superior to that of Marlowe 
igi not allowing either avarice or lust of vengeance to 
attain to such a pitch in his Jew as to take the character 
out of the range of human nature. In contrast with the 
unrelieved blackness of Barabas, the character of Shylock 
remains both truly human and within the limits of 
dramatic probability." 

The Effect of the Eiest and Second INTERPRETA- 
tions on" the eeader's attitude toward shy- 
lock's Antagonists 

That the attitude of the reader toward Shylock must 
affect his attitude toward the other characters in the play 

1 The Macmillan Company, New York. 



INTRODUCTION 19 

is obvious. It evidently would be impossible for Rabbi 
Lewinthal, for example, who regards Shakspere's por- 
trayal of Shylock as on the whole a vindication and not 
a vilification of the Jews, to feel toward Shylock's run- 
away daughter as does Gervinus, who expatiates at length 
regarding her ' lovely character,' or Mrs. Jameson, who 
has written of her, " This Jessica, though properly kept 
subordinate, is certainly 

A most beautiful pagan — a most sweet Jew. 

... In any other play, and in any other companionship 
than that of the matchless Portia, Jessica would make a 
very beautiful heroine in herself." 1 Whereas to Rabbi 
Lewinthal, who would doubtless readily accept the char- 
acterization of her as \ a most beautiful pagan/ but cer- 
tainly not as ' a most sweet Jew,' she is far from being 
4 a very beautiful heroine in herself.' Rabbi Lewinthal, 
on the contrary, enlarges upon " her unnatural conduct, 
her deception of her father, her heartless abandonment 
and exploitation of him, her joining the camp of his ene- 
mies" — and all this, directed against a Jew, "becomes 
her exceeding merit and hope of salvation." 

Likewise the editor of the Dictionary of National Bi- 
ography has referred feelingly to the ' series of barefaced 
falsehoods ' and the ' cruel deceptions ' whereby the Jew's 
' unworthy daughter ' evaded her father's inquiries as to 
Launcelot's business with her — this reflection on Jessica 
coming in, as a matter of course, in a passage attempting 
to show that Shakspere portrayed in Shylock ' the humane 
side of the Jewish character,' 'a man more sinned against 
than sinning.' 2 But to Gervinus Shylock is not more 
sinned against than sinning. On the contrary, he is " this 
outcast of humanity." Gervinus can, then, with a good 

1 Characteristics of Women. 

2 S. L. Lee, The Academy, 27 November, 1880. 



20 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 



conscience speak glowingly of the fair daughter who quite 
justifiably abandoned a home which to her was ' hell.' 

Inasmuch as Shylock is not to Charles W. Thomas an 
' outcast of humanity,' he can speak of Jessica (ShaJce- 
speariana, 1890) as " an unfilial daughter, who disgraced 
the memory of her dead mother, robbed her father of his 
money and jewels, and betrayed his confidence." " What," 
he asks, " can be said in praise of a young woman who 
could insult her father, abandon her people, steal her 
dead mother's gift to a betrothed — her father, and ex- 
change it for a monkey ? " Lloyd, however, has said, 
" Elopement, in Jessica's case, it must be said, is a virtue ; 
and the elation at exchanging freedom for degraded op- 
pression explains and excuses the dry eyes, — nay, laughing 
lips — with which she departs." And as to what Thomas is 
pleased to term the robbery of her father, Lloyd, though 
he evidently considers a defense unnecessary, yet lightly 
says, " If we care to apologize for the casket she carried 
off, we may say she helped herself, perhaps not exorbi- 
tantly, to her dowry." Kor is Gervinus troubled bv 
Jessica's appropriation of the casket worth the pains, for 
he conceives of her as " an ethereal being, naive, and 
inexperienced as a child, and perfectly unacquainted with 
the value of money." Moreover, is not the owner of the 
casket an ' outcast of humanity ' ? 

Lloyd's attitude toward the dry eyes— nay, laughing 
lips — w ith which the fair Jessica leaves her Jewish home 
as the torch-bearer of a Christian youth is easily under- 
stood when one reads his comment on " the maudlin sen- 
timentality that has been bestowed on the murderous 
Jew," who is " the very impersonation of avarice, mean- 
ness, and cruelty, as Antonio of generous and sympa- 
thetic liberality," the Jew with his treacherous bond, 
' the hellish intention ' of which is ' already patent.' The 
poet Heine, apparently, is to some extent guilty of this 



INTRODUCTION 21 

* maudlin sentimentality ' toward ' the murderous Jew,' for 
he exclaims. It was no unloving father whom she forsook, 
whom she robbed, whom she betrayed. — Shameful treach- 
ery ! " N Giles, also, appeals to ' those who have the care 
of families ' whether he be not justified in his feeling 
toward the ' worthless minx,' ' the pert, disobedient hussy 
Jessica,' who " selfishly forgot the duty of a daughter 
when she should have most remembered it." " Why 
should she, a maiden of Israel, leave her poor old father, 
Shylock, alone in the midst of his Christian enemies ? 
What if he was wrong ? The more need he had of her. 
What if most wrong? Even then, even in the mad- 
ness of defeated vengeance, in the misery of humbled 
pride, when regarded as most guilty, when there was 
nothing in the world for him but contempt without pity, 
the child of his home — his only child — should have 
had in her woman's heart a shelter for her scorned 
father." 

But in the history of dramatic literature by the Ger- 
man university professor, Schlegel, one reads of Jessica as 
"the fugitive daughter of the Jew [reference having 
already been made by Schlegel to 'the selfish cruelty 
of the usurer Shylock'], in whom Shakspeare has con- 
trived to throw a veil of sweetness over the national 
features." 

And thus might the reader continue indefinitely look- 
ing here upon this picture and on this. 

Upon the stage likewise there are two Jessicas pre- 
sented according as the Shylock is the wolfish usurer or 
the representative of a race. Edwin Booth, whose con- 
ception of Shylock was in general 1 the former, has no 

1 Not uniformly, however. Booth attempted a representation of 
the play in which Shylock was given more sympathetically, as the 
depositary of the vengeance of a race — indeed, announcing the play 
as Shylock, not as The Merchant of Venice. In a letter to Horace 



22 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

word of blame for Jessica, holding that had Shylock 
shown some affection for his daughter she would not 
have ' robbed and left him.' " These [Jessica, my girl] 
are the only words," he says, " that Shylock speaks which 
in the least degree approach gentleness, and they mean 
nothing." " It has been said," he wrote to Furness, 
" that he is an affectionate father and a faithful friend. 
When, where, and how does he manifest the least claim 
to such commendation ? Tell me that, and unyoke ! 
'Twas the money value of Leah's ring that he grieved over, 
not its associations with her, else he would have shown 
some affection for her daughter, which he did not, or she 
would not have called her home ' a hell,' robbed and left 
him. Shakespeare makes her do these un-Hebrew things 
to intensify the baseness of Shylock's nature. If we 
side with him in his self-defence, 'tis because we have 
charity, which he had not; if we pity him under the 
burden of his merited punishment 'tis because we are 
human, which he is not, — except in shape, and even 
that, I think, should indicate the crookedness of his 
nature." 

Inasmuch as Sir Henry Irving regards Shylock as ' the 
type of a persecuted race,' the scene following the discovery 
of Jessica's flight will not be given by him in the spirit 
in which it was given by Edwin Booth, nor will the spec- 
tator entertain at the close of the scene so kindly a feel- 
ing toward Lorenzo's love, the sweet soul who did steal 
from the wealthy Jew And with an unthrift love did run 
from Venice As far as Belmont. In this scene, ' sus- 
tained by Sir Henry Irving with great power,' " his rea- 
son seems to reel under the heavy blow it has received, 
and the brief allusion to his dead wife is full of pathos 

Howard Furness, quoted below, Booth refers to his attempt ' to view 
him in that light.' 



INTRODUCTION 23 

and tenderness. The father is here more visible than the 
usurer." After such a presentation of the play the -spec- 
tator may perhaps be somewhat bewildered in reading 
the glowing encomiums of Gervinus on the c lovely char- 
acter ' of the gentle daughter, who was so ' naive ' in 
regard to money matters that she did not know that the 
casket she threw to Lorenzo was worth the pains. 

The Poet Laureate " did not much approve Irving's 
c Shylock/ ' He made you pity Shylock too much.' " * 

This pity awakened for Shylock must inevitably affect 
the spectator's attitude toward the antagonists of Shy- 
lock, including the fair Jessica. Illustrations might be 
heaped up indefinitely showing how, as Browning has 
brought out so overwhelmingly in The Ring and the 
Book, the reader's attitude toward one character affects 
his attitude toward others. Indeed Professor Sherman, 
for example, states explicitly 2 that, since Bassanio can- 
not be made much of as a hero, it would not do to make 
much of Portia, " or we shall regret the match." Pro- 
fessor Sherman would love Bassanio more, one may 
assume, did he love Shylock less. " The love part of the 
play," he says, " must of course be secondary, since Bas- 
sanio is a spendthrift, and cannot be made much of as a 
hero." This attitude toward Bassanio clearly affects his 
attitude toward Portia, for he adds, " Portia must be 
clever rather than — like her namesake in the Julius 
Ccesar — great, or we shall regret the match." And his 
attitude toward Bassanio was presumably affected by his 
attitude toward Shylock. 'I In The Merchant of Venice," 
he says, " Shakespeare's interest appears to have centered 
in Shylock as the typic sixteenth century Jew. The 

1 Alfred Lord Tennyson, A Memoir by his Son, The Macmillan 
Company, New York, 1897, vol. ii, p. 260. 

2 What is Shakespeare ? L. A. Sherman, The Macmillan Com- 
pany, New York, 1902, p. 326. 



2 A THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

study shows remarkable insight into the Hebrew con- 
sciousness, and goes far toward alleviating various Chris- 
tian prejudices against the race. To the superficial reader 
Shylock has too often seemed nothing but the impersona- 
tion of greed and malice." 

The Difficulty in the Third Interpretation — 
Shylock humantzed, but to What Extent? 

Could readers of The Merchant of Venice but agree as 
to the extent to which the conventional Jew monster has 
been humanized by Shakspere's ' unconscious tact/ then 
might they more easily find the way to master Jew's, 
which now, ' by God's sonties,' seems a hard way to hit. 
It is no mean happiness to be seated in the mean, but a 
hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree, and the reader whose 
judgment approves of this interpretation of the play is 
indeed fortunate, if his brain is not compelled to devise 
laws for his blood and scant some excess of sympathy 
with the Hebrew father whose gentle daughter has been 
persuaded to abandon her home and the faith of her fa- 
thers ; or with the aroused Jew's fierce passion for re- 
venge, that ' swollen gush of elemental human passion,' 
whose intensity may perhaps seem to give to vengeance a 
character of grandeur, and to make of old Shylock a 
well-nigh tragic figure. It is not at all impossible for the 
reader whose deliberate choice is this third leaden casket 
of interpretation to find himself unhappily inclining at 
times toward the interpretation of the partisans of Shy- 
lock, the second given above, and that way madness lies 
for him, if his conscience hanging about the neck of his 
heart urges him to entertain toward Bassanio that 
warmth of affection he is persuaded he ought to entertain 
toward one who won the love of the fair Portia, of won- 
drous virtues, of whom it hath been said, with the full 



INTRODUCTION 25 

consent of the world's great Shaksperean scholar, 1 " the 
poor rude world hath not her fellow." 

The reader who holds the first interpretation given 
above passes lightly by the evidences of Shylock's human- 
ity ; the reader committed to the second interpretation 
either passes over or accounts for and justifies the feroc- 
ity of Shylock's desire for vengeance ; for the reader 
whose judgment approves of the third interpretation, it is 
no mean happiness to remain seated in the mean. 

But it were here easier to teach twenty what were 
good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow one's 
own teaching. By my troth, to remain consistently seated 
in the mean is difficult. Indeed, as Boas and Barrett 
Wendell and ten Brink say in substance, it appears to be 
well-nigh impossible — to the modern reader. Whereas 
Ward emphasizes the ' art ' of Shakspere in " not allowing 
either avarice or lust of vengeance to attain to such a 
pitch in his Jew as to take the character out of the range 
of human nature," Boas ventures in this connection to 
use the word ' inconsistency,' though he hastens to add 
that the inconsistency is the measure of Shakspere's great- 
ness. The general impression which the character of 
Shylock is intended to leave, he says, is that of a stony- 
hearted usurer. " Shakspere too [like Marlowe] was suf- 
ficiently a man of his time to gratify the popular taste by 

1 " In my secret heart I like to believe that Shakespeare had 
fallen in love with Portia, as why should he not, with the most per- 
fect of his creations ? " — Horace Howard Furness, p. 224. 

This is adduced as a possible reason why Shakspere suffers this 
play to end as ' a Christian Comedy ' rather than ' a Jewish Tragedy.' 
The sentence following the above is, " and though he might have 
thought that as a work of art the play should be tragedy, yet that 
the vision of Portia's troubled, agonised face was more than he could 
bear, and her streaming eyes were more intolerable to him than 
Anthonio's streaming breast ; it is to Portia, in more ways than one 
then, that I hope the Merchant owes his life." 



26 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

the spectacle of a Jewish villain." But Shakspere, l as is 
the case with consummate genius/ was * carried beyond 
himself by the irresistible sway of his own creation.' 
" Shylock is no automaton, but a being of flesh and blood, 
and the fierce pressure of his agony forces to the surface 
from depths still unpetrified by wrong done or suffered 
this swollen gush of elemental human passion." 1 

But notwithstanding ' the magnificent outburst ' in 
which Shylock * vindicates against a brutal fanaticism the 
essential equality of human conditions in Jew and Chris- 
tian,' in which he rises to the dignity of a well-nigh 
tragic figure, Shylock, with the entry of Tubal, 'sinks 
back into the stony-hearted usurer ' again. The conclu- 
sion of Boas is, " Shylock stands at the bar of poetic jus- 
tice ' half-way between a martyr and a criminal,' and in the 
unsatisfactory impression left on modern readers at the 
close of the trial-scene, Shakspere has suffered the nemesis 
which in the long run always overtakes the artist who 
from conviction or opportunism ministers to the preju- 
dices of his age." 

So Barrett Wendell, discussing this matter of the 
reader's sympathy in this play, concludes, " There are few 
facts in the Elizabethan drama which more strongly em- 
phasize the remoteness from ourselves not only of Eliza- 
bethan England, but also of Shakspere, the Elizabethan 
playwright." In this play, he has said, we instinctively 
sympathize with everybody. Shylock's revenge ' if not 
admirable, is most comprehensible.' " Not so, to modern 
feeling, is the contemptuously brutal treatment which he 
receives from the charming people with whom we are ex- 
pected to sympathize fully." ' About the only fault one 



1 The poet Swinburne is apparently altogether untouched by this 
swollen gush of elemental human passion. See his comment on this 
play quoted on p. 38 below. 



INTRODUCTION 27 

can fairly find with Portia,' he insists, " is the fault she 
shares with all the other delightful people in the play. 
One and all, with whom our sympathy is clearly expected 
to go, treat Shylock, who nowadays is made almost equally 
sympathetic, in a manner which any modern temper must 
deem cruelly inhuman." 

And not only does the treatment of Shylock by these 
charming people seem cruelly inhuman now, but " no 
rendering of Shylock which makes the man look noble 
enough to be seriously sympathetic could ever have failed 
to command sympathy." And yet 'as an artistic play- 
wright,' Shakspere ' could not have meant our sympathy 
to go with Shylock.' Hence Barrett Wendell's conclusion, 
quoted above, as to the 'remoteness' from ourselves of 
Elizabethan England, and also of Shakspere. 

To the illustrious scholar, the historian of English 
literature, whose students are found in college and uni- 
versity chairs of English in all English-speaking coun- 
tries, the late Professsor Bernhard ten Brink, was likewise 
denied the no mean happiness of remaining always hap- 
pily seated in the mean. On the contrary he held 1 that 
against a part of Shylock's treatment in the celebrated 
trial-scene our feelings ' justly rebel.' Professor ten Brink 
cannot properly be included among the partisans of Shy- 
lock. The first word he applies to him is the derogatory 
word ' sinister ' — ' the sinister but imposing figure of Shy- 
lock.' He characterizes him as ' a heartless father, a mer- 
ciless usurer,' 'who hates all Christians, but above all 
Antonio, whose high-minded, humane sentiments are di- 
rectly opposed to his own nature.' And yet this man 
nevertheless, in his way, ' clings to religion.' And Shy- 



1 FiXnf Vorlesungen uber Shakspere, Bernhard ten Brink, Strass- 
burg, 1895. An English translation is published by Henry Holt and 
Company, New York. 



28 THE MERCHANT OP VENICE 

lock's motives, says ten Brink, taken in connection with 
his religious motive, ' assume a certain justification.' 

To the question then raised hy ten Brink how Shak- 
spere could possibly have made such a man as Shylock 
appeal to us, how he could arouse our sympathies in his 
fate, his answer is that Shylock is more than a merciless 
usurer — he is a Jew. He belongs to a race which for cen- 
turies has been persecuted, robbed, tortured, trodden 
under foot. And Antonio hates his sacred nation, and 
spits upon his Jewish gaberdine. Therefore when Shy- 
lock cries, Hath not a Jew eyes ? hands, organs, affections, 
passions ? If you prick us, do we not bleed ? if you 
poison us, do we not die ? and if you wrong us, shall we 
not revenge ? — Shylock here, says ten Brink, comes close 
to us humanly, we feel for him and with him. 

The following extract gives in substance ten Brink's 
discussion — not final, as a matter of course, yet to many 
worth a Jewess' eye — of this matter of sympathy with 
Shylock, and also ten Brink's feeling on another neces- 
sary question of the play — one much discussed — the happy 
close with moonlight and music of the fifth act. 

" It is above all on account of this feeling [because, 
that is, he comes close to us humanly, because we feel for 
him and with him] that the celebrated trial-scene in the 
fourth act strikes us as harshly discordant. If Shylock 
is prevented from carrying out his bloody intentions in 
regard to Antonio, even if he is remorselessly punished, 
mortally wounded in what he holds most dear, it is noth- 
ing more than poetic justice. It is only against his being 
forced to become a convert that our feelings justly rebel. 
The contemporaries of the poet doubtless attached no such 
importance to this point. But it is not merely poetic jus- 
tice that our feelings demand. Shylock has come too close 
to us, we have learned to know too intimately the grounds 
of his hatred, of the intensity of his resentment, his figure 
has become too humanly significant, and the misfortune 
which overtakes him appeals too deeply to our sympa- 



INTRODUCTION 29 

thies, to permit us to be reconciled to the idea that his 
fate, which moves us so tragically, should be conceived 
otherwise than as a tragedy. We are powerfully moved 
when this man who stands upon his right, who stakes all 
to gain it, who hour by hour is strengthened in the belief 
that his right will be granted him — when this man sud- 
denly feels the ground give Way beneath his feet, when, 
in the name and with the forms of law, he is cheated of 
his right. And we cannot dismiss the thought that this 
decision, brought about by a lucky accident, by the sophis- 
tical interpretation of a document, is not commensurate 
to Shylock's grand passion. We crave to feel the necessity 
of the fate which befalls him, the inevitableness of his 
ruin. Not only the higher moral motives of his judges, 
but also the legal motives of the sentence as such, we 
wish to feel to be justified and necessary. 

" There is a discordance here which cannot be ex- 
plained away. It was impossible for Shakspere to avoid 
it. The most essential feature of the tale — the suit about 
the pound of flesh — the real purpose, the gist of the 
whole, he could not and would not discard. It embraces, 
indeed, a symbolically profound thought: Summumjus, 
summa injuria ; it is admirably adapted to satisfy upon 
Shylock, in the most pronounced form, the demands of 
poetic justice. Considered in the abstract, this feature 
satisfies our understanding, creates the pleasing impres- 
sion which the spirited solution of a difficult problem is 
wont to produce. And in comedy we must often resort 
to abstraction in order to find unalloyed enjoyment. 
When we see the success of the plans in which the poet 
has specially aroused our interest, the favorable change 
of fortune of the persons who chiefly enlist our sympa- 
thies, we often dare not too vividly realize the moral 
relations and human individuality of those who, in the 
happy consummation, are deeply wounded and hurt. 
Few comedies would be enjoyable without abstraction of 
this kind. But Shakspere renders this abstraction so 
difficult for us because he himself was incapable of it, 
because all his characters are drawn with equal sympathy 
and with equal objectiveness ; there is, consequently, 
often something unsatisfying in the denouement of his 
comedies. The offense generally consists in this : that 



30 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

for the sake of a happy solution the evil which appears 
too prominent in some of his personages is not wholly 
eradicated, the guilt not adequately atoned. In The 
Merchant of Venice we have an instance of the opposite : 
a comic [*] solution and a tragic character ; a tragic fate 
developed in a manner befitting comedy." 

A Method of Intebpbetation suggested — the Play 

TO BE INTEBPBETED BY THE FEELING TOWABD 
ONE ANOTHER OF THE CHABACTEBS OF THE PLAY 

There yet remains to consider a method of interpre- 
tation according to which the play must be read in the 
light of the feeling toward the characters of the play 
entertained by the other characters, and not in the light 
of the feeling entertained by a reader three centuries 
later, which may be quite different both toward the char- 
acters and the ' Motivirung,' that is, the motives given or 
the causes suggested for the course of the action. 

For example, a number of comments have been 
quoted above respecting the conduct of Jessica — some of 
these extremely unfavorable to Jessica. Jessica's con- 
duct, that is, is to many modern readers wholly inexcusa- 
ble. But there can be no doubt as to the attitude toward 

1 " And Shylock's character is essentially tragic ; there is none of 
the proper timber of comedy in him." — Hudson, p. 295. 

"As soon as Shylock's fate is sealed in the Fourth Act, .the public 
usually begins to arise and prepare to leave. To it Shylock's case is 
the main interest of the play. In vain do the commentators cry that 
the Shylock business is only a great episode. The public heeds them 
not, but follows its own impression. And this impression rests on 
indisputable, aesthetic laws. The discord between the tone of the 
comedy and the tragic tone of Shylock's fate cannot be denied. If; 
cannot be denied that the deadly agony of that part of the play is 
not in accord with a Comedy ; or that the Trial Scene, with its ques- 
tion of life and death, makes a far deeper impression than all the 
rest, and that a whole Act following thereon is, to the audience, in- 
trusive and superfluous " (Oechelhauser). 



INTRODUCTION 31 

Jessica of the characters of the play. Rabbi Lewinthal, 
reading the play in the light of the twentieth century, 
and with some bias toward Shylock perhaps, whom he 
looks upon as the representative of an oppressed race, a 
man more sinned against than sinning, cannot overlook 
her abandonment of her father and her religion — but 
Portia could ; and so could all the chief characters of the 
play — excepting, as a matter of course, Shylock. When 
the twentieth-century reader of the play, then, expresses 
the wish — as many have done — that the fair Jessica, 
when she left her Jewish home with a Christian lover, 
had left her father's ducats and jewels behind, instead of 
holding a candle to her shames by gilding herself with 
some more ducats and with a casket worth the pains, he is, 
according to this interpretation, reading into the play a 
modern scruple of which there is not a hint in the play 
itself — that is, as entertained by Antonio and his friends, 
be it understood. The fair Jessica is, to all these char- 
acters, not only fair but also wise and true. She is 
entrusted by the lovely heroine — l the most perfect ' of 
Shakspere's creations says our Shakspere scholar — with 
the care of Belmont, while its owner is away on her 
errand of mercy. And about her and her Christian hus- 
band is thrown in the closing act a poetic atmosphere in 
which moonlight and music and ' patines of bright gold ' 
and ' young-eyed cherubins' are a prophecy of the greater 
glory of the years to come. 

When therefore our great Shakspere scholar asks in 
regard to Jessica, " Where is ' die tragische Schuld ' of 
our German brothers, that relentless fate which pursues 
the guilty and ensures their downfall, here in Jessica's 
career?" he is primarily concerned, not with intro- 
ducing himself a modern scruple into this frankly anti- 
Jewish atmosphere, but with advising ' our German 
brothers ' that their doctrine of ' die tragische Schuld ' 



32 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

as to Shakspere in general and Jessica in particular 
' needs patching.' 

But though the chief concern of Furness here is to 
advise his German brethren that their doctrine of ' die 
tragi sche Schuld ' needs patching, yet he himself shares 
somewhat in their feeling toward Jessica, and he does 
not altogether share the feeling of the lovely Portia of 
wondrous virtues, to him the most perfect of Shakspere's 
creations, toward this wise and true convert to Christian- 
ity. His own feeling, as indicated by comments here and 
elsewhere in his notes on the play, is that there is some 
' Schuld ' in the conduct of Jessica toward her father — 
which does not seem to him to reap its appropriate 
reward in accordance with the theories of our German 
brothers as to ' die tragische Schuld,' and poetic justice 
so-called. " From the hour of the cruel deception of her 
father onward," he says, " smooth success is strewed be- 
fore her little feet, until they trip into bliss and Belmont 
under patines of bright gold. Why was a fate so differ- 
ent allotted to poor Desdemona, who yielded to her old 
father, after her first offence, all the tender devotion that 
a married daughter can bestow? I am afraid the doc- 
trine of ' die tragische Schuld ' in Shakespeare needs 
patching." 

But according to the method of interpretation now 
under consideration there could be no discussion of * die 
tragische Schuld ' in connection with Jessica. 

A ' tragische Schuld ' in the conduct of the fair Jes- 
sica? It did not for a moment occur to Portia or to 
Bassanio or the good Antonio, " with whom," says Bar- 
rett Wendell, " our sympathy is clearly expected to go," 
that there was any guilt connected with Jessica's departure 
from a house which to her was 4 hell,' even though in her 
departure she was * gilded ' with ducats and jewels, and 
took with her a casket ' worth the pains ' — including, 



INTRODUCTION 33 

alas, the twentieth-century reader recalls, her dead 
mother's gift to her betrayed father, the betrothal ring 
sold in Genoa by the unfilial daughter for a monkey. 

But of all this — that is, the feeling of the twentieth- 
century reader — there is in the play not a word. As 
Moulton * has said, Jessica to the persons in the play is 
' full of attractions/ " All with whom she comes into 
contact feel her spell : the rough Launcelot parts from 
her with tears he is ashamed of yet cannot keep down ; 
Salarino — the last of men to take high views of women — 
resents as a sort of blasphemy Shylock's claiming her as 
his flesh and blood ; while between Jessica and Portia there 
seems to spring in an instant an attraction as mysterious 
as is the tie between Antonio and Bassanio." 

As to Jessica, then, the reader who puts himself in the 
place of Portia and her friends will exclaim with Lorenzo, 

" Beshrew me but I love her heartily ; 
For she is wise, if I can judge of her; 
And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true ; 
And true she is, as she hath proved herself ; 
And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true, 
Shall she be placed in my constant soul." 

And so likewise in regard to Bassanio, Antonio's 
c most noble kinsman,' readers may turn o'er many books 
together in which are found the opinions of learned 
judges, setting forth his expedition to Belmont in no 
flattering terms — such as, for example, the following, 

" The heiress-hunting Bassanio " (Eabbi Krauskopf ). 

" Bassanio is not too proud of his scheme " (Professor 
Gummere). 

" An ignoble petition most charmingly put, winding 
about Antonio's love ' with circumstance ' " (Professor 
Katherine Lee Bates). 

1 Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, Richard G. Moulton, Oxford, 
at the Clarendon Press, 3d edition, 1897. 



34: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

" Though he gives Antonio to understand that there 
have been previous passages of love between them, and 
extols the lady's virtues and beauty, Bassanio's scheme, 
as he unfolds it, is rather too much of a financial enter- 
prise to quite suit our taste. Like other speculations it 
needs capital, and for this he now appeals to Antonio, on 
the plea that it will be an investment which may recoup 
the merchant for former losses " (Professor Boas). 

" Bassanio, hanging his velvet-capped head and finger- 
ing his gold buttons, says that he does not complain, not 
he, of his straitened circumstances, but he is anxious to 
rid himself of this burden of debt heaped up by his 
youthful extravagance. He owes the most to Antonio, 
and has the grace to hesitate a little in proposing that 
Antonio lend him another large sum with which he may 
equip himself handsomely and go heiress-hunting, so ' to 
get clear of all the debts ' he owes " (Professor Bates). 

" I think it by no means certain that ' pure innocence ' 
does not here mean pure foolishness. Bassanio assuredly 
was aware how flimsy was the pretext for Anthonio to 
send more good money after bad, and that his best argu- 
ment was drawn from childish games, and therefore does 
not attempt to disguise the ' innocence ' (in its frequent 
meaning of childishness, foolishness) of his proposal. 
Moreover, the greater the folly of the risk, the greater the 
proof of Anthonio's friendship in assuming it " (Horace 
Howard Furness). 

However correctly these expositors — the greatness of 
whose learning one cannot enough commend, whose 
trial shall better publish their commendation — have inter- 
preted modern feeling in regard to Argonautic expedi- 
tions for the golden fleece of ladies * richly left,' yet the 
advocate of the method of interpretation under consider- 
ation would reply, " These deeds must not be thought 
After these ways ; so, it will make us mad " — " 0, that way 
madness lies ; let me shun that ; No more of that." 

These scruples as to the expedition of Bassanio are 
clearly 'modern instances.' To the good Antonio and 



INTRODUCTION 35 

the fair Portia Bassanio still stands within the eye of 
honour. His method of getting clear of all the debts he 
owes is not in the least objectionable to them. Not once 
in the play is any reflection made on him, even by Shy- 
lock, for having gone on ' an heiress-hunting expedition/ 
Indeed, on the contrary, the poetry of the casket scene, 
where he makes his choice while music sounds, the glow, 
the warmth, the color, the ecstasy of the fair lady of won- 
drous virtues, her insuppressive cry, ' 0, love be moderate ; 
I feel too much thy blessing ' — surely the reader is to feel 
with Portia's friend that holy men at their death have 
good inspirations, and he is to rejoice wholly that he who 
won the love of Antonio and of Portia, * having such a bless- 
ing in his lady,' finds the joys of heaven here on earth. 

As to Antonio, the good Antonio, the dearest friend, 
the kindest man — to all the persons in the play, excepting 
Shylock, a kinder gentleman did not tread the earth, a 
man with affection wondrous sensible, the most unwearied 
spirit in doing courtesies, who won the hate of the mer- 
ciless usurer by delivering from his forfeitures many that 
did make moan to him, the royal merchant, the good An- 
tonio, the honest Antonio, " that I had a title good 
enough to keep his name company ! " V 

True, this kind-hearted gentleman had a custom which 
grievously offends many modern readers, 1 viz., that of 

1 This custom apparently did not offend Ruskin, who was yet a 
kind-hearted man who gave away a large fortune and died poor, to 
whom the Dean of Canterbury, F. W. Farrar, referred in glowing 
terms in October, 1898, as " almost the last supreme moral and spiri- 
tual teacher of this age who is still left among us." 

" This inhumanity of mercenary commerce . . . this is the ulti- 
mate lesson which the leader of English intellect meant for us, . . . in 
the tale of The Merchant of Venice ; in which the true and incorrupt 
merchant, — kind and free beyond every other Shakspearian conception 
of men, — is opposed to the corrupted merchant, or usurer ; the lesson 
being deepened by the expression of the strange hatred which the 



36 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

spitting upon Jewish gaberdines, Shylock's in particular, 
and voiding his rheum upon their beards, but this custom 
met with the entire approval of the English spectator or 
reader, just as did the custom of the gallant Harry Hot- 
spar, which was, viz., to kill me some six or seven dozen of 
Scots at a breakfast and then to wash his hands and say 
to his wife, ' Fie upon this quiet life ! I want work.' ' 
my sweet Harry,' says she, ' how many hast thou killed 
to-day?' 'Give my roan horse a drench' [drink], says 
he ; and answers, ' Some fourteen,' an hour after ; ' a 
trifle, a trifle.' 

A trifle also, to the persons in the play, was what 
Professor Barrett Wendell has called Antonio's ' expectora- 
tory method' of manifesting distaste for the Hebrew race 
in general and for this dog Jew in particular. At the open- 
ing of the trial-scene the head of the Venetian State him- 
self had much to say of the malice, the strange cruelty, of 
the stony adversary, the inhuman wretch, but nothing 
derogatory to say of Antonio's treatment of Shylock. 
And Portia's reference to Antonio, to the effect that being 
the bosom lover of her lord he needs must be like her 
lord, and if so, how little the cost bestowed in purchasing 
him ' from out a state of hellish cruelty,' assuredly does 
not indicate any feeling on her part that Antonio too 
needed to be taught the quality of mercy, or that it ever 
occurred to ' the most perfect ' of Shakspere's creations, 
as it has to a modern commentator, that " Antonio has 
insulted and baited Shylock in the most brutal fashion on 
account of his faith and his blood." On the contrary, to 
all the persons in the play — Shylock excepted — Antonio 
is, as according to the interpretation under consideration 
he must still be understood to be, ' a perfect character.' 

corrupted merchant bears to the pure one, mixed with intense scorn/' 
etc. — llunera Pulveris, John Ruskin, Chapter iv, section 100. 



INTRODUCTION 37 

As to Shylock, he has, it is true, been humanized — 
though far more to the modern reader than to the persons 
in the play. Salarino was silenced, as well he might be, 
by Shylock's unanswerable plea, Hath not a Jew eyes, 
senses, affections, passions ? fed with the same food, hurt 
with the same weapons, as a Christian is ? if you poison 
us, do we not die ? and if you wrong us, shall we not re- 
venge ? But however greatly this * swollen gush of ele- 
mental human passion ' may move the reader to-day, 
though it did — for the time — silence Salarino, yet it did 
not change his attitude toward the dog Jew. He felt no 
kindlier toward Shylock after this than before. The next 
time he saw him he stigmatized him as the most impene- 
trable cur that ever kept with men. 

As to Antonio's treatment of Shylock, which as Bar- 
rett Wendell says, 'must seem cruelly inhuman to any 
modern temper ' — of all this Salarino felt nothing, nor 
did any one else in the play of those with whom the 
reader's sympathy is clearly expected to go. Jessica's 
comment, — 

" When I was with him I hare heard him swear 
To Tubal and to Chus, his countrymen, 
That he would rather have Antonio's flesh 
Than twenty times the value of the sum 
That he did owe him : " — 

is clearly introduced here for the purpose, not of making 
the reader think in silence " How sharper than a serpent's 
tooth it is to have a thankless child," but to make his 
heart go out to poor Antonio with whom it will go hard 
if this cruel devil be not curbed of his will. 

And the quips and quirks of Launcelot — equine 
gambols though they be to those inclined to pity Shy- 
lock — are yet clearly presumed to please the reader 
through casting richly merited reproach upon the dog 
Jew, the very Devil incarnation — who is dismissed from 



38 THE MERCHANT OP VENICE 

the play and from the reader's thoughts with Gratiano's 
jest, 

" In christening thou shalt have two godfathers : 
Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more, 
To bring thee to the gallows, not the font," 

while the thoughts of the reader are carried on to the 
sportive episode of the rings, and to a beautiful picture of 
moonlight and music, and 'patines of bright gold,' and 
' young-eyed cherubins,' and noble lords and ladies in fair 
Belmont, — " among marble palaces, beneath roofs of fretted 
gold, o'er cedar floors and pavements of jasper and por- 
phyry — amid gardens full of statues, and flowers and foun- 
tains, and haunting music " (Mrs. Jameson). 

Many a reader, it is true, refuses to let his thoughts 
be thus carried on to the happy close oblivious 1 of Shy- 

1 See the comment of ten Brink, quoted on page 28, to the effect 
that Shakspere often makes it difficult for the reader to let his 
thoughts be thus carried on to a happy close oblivious of the suffer- 
ings of the comic victim — difficult because "all his characters are 
drawn with equal sympathy and equal objectiveness," because, as 
ten Brink says elsewhere, the spectator has become ' too vividly con- 
scious ' of the painful and hurtful side of the comic situation to be 
altogether satisfied with the comic denouement. For an illuminating 
discussion of the subject, see the chapter in ten Brink, Shakspere as 
Comic Poet. 

The poet Swinburne, however, has no difficulty, apparently, in 
yielding himself to the spirit of the play as described above. 

" In this first group of four [ The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado 
about Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night] — wholly differing on 
that point from the later constellation of three — there is but very sel- 
dom, not more than once or twice at most, a shooting or passing 
gleam of anything more lurid or less lovely than ' a light of laughing 
flowers.' There is but just enough of evil or even of passion admitted 
into their sweet spheres of life to proclaim them living : and all that 
does find entrance is so tempered by the radiance of the rest that we 
retain but softened and lightened recollections even of Shylock and 
Don Juan when we think of The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado 
about Nothing ; we hardly feel in As You Like It the presence or the 



INTRODUCTION 39 

lock's sufferings — he refuses, that is, according to this 
interpretation, to yield himself to the spirit of the play. 

Furthermore, according to this interpretation, cold 
indeed and labour lost is all protest in regard to any legal 
(or other) aspect of Portia's decisions — such as, for exam- 
ple, the following, 

" Had Shakespeare been a Chancery lawyer he might 
have caused an injunction to be served on Shylock, and 
avoided the unsatisfactory and quibbling process by which 
Portia rescued the Merchant from the knife of the Jew " 
(Law in Shakespeare, C. K. Davis, St. Paul, 1884). 

" Considerable latitude is to be allowed to the drama- 
tist ; but when I see Antonio saved by a species of con- 
struction, according to which, if a man contracted for 
leave to cut a slice of melon, he would be deprived of the 
benefit of his contract unless he had stipulated, in so 
many words, for the incidental spilling of the juice, one 
cannot help recognizing in the fiction of the immortal 
poet an intensified representation of the popular faith — 

existence of Oliver and Duke Frederick ; and in Twelfth Night, for 
all its name of the midwinter, we find nothing to remember that 
might jar with the loveliness of love and the summer light of life." — 
A Study of Shakespeare, Algernon Charles Swinburne, New York 
1887, p. 149. 

John Addington Symonds rejoices likewise in the happy close. 
'' Shylock disappears together with the storm and passion he has stirred. 
And round him Shakspere grouped some of our dearest friends — 
noble Bassanio, devoted Antonio, witty Gratiano, the dignity of Portia, 
the tenderness of Jessica, the merriment of Nerissa. These remain, 
and over them, at last, is shed an atmosphere of peace and music in 
that moonlight act, the loveliest Shakspere ever wrote. Its beauty 
never dies. Jessica still sits upon the bank, and Lorenzo whispers to 
her of ' the young-eyed cherubim' We hear the voices of Portia and 
Nerissa coming through the twilight of the garden. The music, 
sweeter by night than day, still lingers in our ears. The lovers' 
quarrel, so artfully contrived and so delightfully concluded, still en- 
chants our sympathy. How different is the impression left by Mar- 
lowe's play !" — Shakspere 's Predecessors in the English Drama, John 
Addington Symonds, London, 1884, p. G51. 



40 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

that the law regarded the letter not the spirit " {Outlines 
of Equity, Haynes). 

"... now it is generally agreed that up to a certain 
point he was the victim of a downright quibble, and that 
even on the third point, that of conspiracy, his conviction 
was, perhaps, of doubtful propriety " (Furness, reporting 
many opinions in regard to law in the trial scene, -pp. 
403-420). 

"... but a persecuted Jew he is not [before Portia's 
jot of blood judgment] ; that, however, he at once be- 
comes, and compels our sympathy, when the law, which 
ought to have supported him, crushes him " (Furness, 
giving his own opinion, p. 223). 

" That the Jew, Shylock, is promised mercy if he will 
turn Christian, shocks the moral sense of the spectator, 
and he is probably not inclined to concede that it was a 
just judge who so decided " (Freytag, Technique of the 
Drama). 

" Whatever may have been the guilt and bloodthirsti- 
ness of Shylock, one cannot get entirely over the impres- 
sion that he is a hardly used man " (Lounsbury, p. 335). 

" It is manifest that the agreement as to the pound of 
flesh, if it is to be recognized by a court of justice at all, 
cannot without the grossest perversion of justice be can- 
celled on the ground of its omitting to mention blood " 
(Moulton, p. 65). 

" The tables are completely turned, and the dramatic 
effect is overwhelming. But the plea [Shed thou no 
blood] is so transparent a quibble that it has been by no 
means universally upheld in posterity's court of appeal. 
To maintain that Shylock's defeat is the triumph of 
Christian conciliatory love, of mediating mercy over law, 
is absurd " (Boas, p. 232). 

" In the present case, while painting Shylock as a 
monster, he secures for him a hold upon our sympathies 
by representing him as a victim of intolerable ill-treat- 
ment and injustice. . . . Finally, our sense of deliverance 
in the Trial Scene cannot hinder a touch of compunction 
for the crushed plaintiff, as he appeals against the hard 



INTRODUCTION 41 

justice meted out to him : — ... By thus making us 
resent the harsh fate dealt to Shylock the dramatist re- 
covers in our minds the fellow-feeling we have lost in 
contemplating the Jew himself. ... So successful has 
Shakespeare been in the present instance that a respecta- 
ble minority of readers rise from the play partisans of 
Shylock " (Moulton, pp. 59-61). 

But no reader rises from the play a partisan of Shy- 
lock, it is held, who gives himself up to the spirit of the 
play and lets his sympathies go where they are clearly 
expected to go. At Portia's words, " Tarry a little ; 
there is something else," the reader is certainly presumed 
to breathe a sigh of relief that a way has been found at 
last to curb this cruel devil of his will. And content that 
Shylock is presently to become a Christian he feels no 
more compunctions about any legal quibble than did the 
kindly heroine of wondrous virtues, who had attempted 
with her beautiful plea for mercy — in vain, alas, because 
of the very tyranny and rage of his spirit — to soften that 
— than which what's harder? — Shylock's Jewish heart; 
and the reader is clearly presumed to be wholly in sym- 
pathy with the Duke in his suggestion to Antonio, " grat- 
ify this gentleman, For, in my mind, you are much 
bound to him." 

That it is difficult for many a modern reader to read 
the play in this spirit, to make his sympathies go unre- 
servedly, that is, where they are clearly expected to go, is 
undeniable — as witnesseth the perplexity of many learned 
judges referred to above, ten Brink as an example being 
quoted at some length. Professor Moulton also, who as 
an interpreter of literature is certainly a good divine, 
apparently does not succeed in this case even in following 
his own instructions. For, though he has said, on page 
47 of his Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, that * we 
must read the play in the light of its age,' that ' intoler- 
ance was a mediaeval virtue,' and that ' Antonio must be 
4 



42 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

understood as a perfect character,' yet by the time he 
reaches page 64, having in the meantime been influenced 
perhaps by outdwelling his time on the ' intolerable ill- 
treatment and injustice ' of which he says (page 59) Shy- 
lock was a victim, he now refers to a certain ' ignominy ' 
as " a fate which, it must be admitted, was no more than 
Antonio justly deserved." " Again at the opening of the 
trial, the Duke gives expression to the universal opinion 
that Shylock's conduct was intelligible only on the sup- 
position that he was keeping up to the last moment the 
appearance of insisting on his strange terms, in order 
that before the eyes of the whole city he might exhibit 
his enemy at his mercy, and then add to his ignominy f 1 ] 
by publicly pardoning him ; a fate which, it must be 
admitted, was no more than Antonio justly deserved." 

But though the heart of Professor Moulton rebels, per- 
haps ' justly rebels/ to use the phrase of Professor ten 
Brink, against the laws of interpretation he has de- 
vised for his twentieth-century blood, yet these laws 
are, according to the method of interpretation now under 
consideration, altogether sound. To catch the spirit in 
which the play was written each character must be 
viewed in the light of the feeling entertained toward him 

1 " Does Shylock really intend to carry out the forfeiture of his 
bond ? Hardly ; he intends merely to humiliate, to torture his enemy, 
to see him at his feet, and then to heap coals of fire on his head by a 
magnanimous revenge. What a triumph for the ' dog ' that to him, 
to the dog, the great man should owe his life. What a degradation, 
worse than death, for the ' royal merchant,' to drag ever after like a 
chain, the gift of his very life at the hands of a Jew ! " — Dr. M. Jas- 
trow. Young Israel, May 1876. 

Jessica's flight and robbery changed Shylock's purpose, in the 
opinion of Dr. Jastrow, and of many others. Professor Moulton sug- 
gests here that it is because Shylock ' has been maddened by the loss 
of his daughter ' that he now clings with a madman's tenacity to the 
idea of blood. 



INTRODUCTION 43 

by the other characters of the play. So viewed, the good 
Antonio will be understood to be a perfect character, not- 
withstanding what appears to many modern readers to 
be the injustice and inhumanity of his treatment of Shy- 
lock — a treatment in no way displeasing to the author of 
that imperishable plea for mercy, nor to any other of 
4 the delightful people in the play ' — Jessica included — 
with whom, as Barrett Wendell has said, the reader's sym- 
pathies are clearly expected to go. 

The Play in the Light of its Age — Shylock in 
Shakspere's Day 

The treatment of Shylock by Antonio, and the atti- 
tude toward this treatment of his friends, especially of 
the kind-hearted Portia, is easily accounted for by one 
who reads the play in the light of its age — disregarding 
for the time at least the effect of this treatment on the 
reader of tb-day. When thus read in the light of its age 
there can be no question as to the unsympathetic attitude 
of an Elizabethan spectator toward the Jew money lender. 
For, though there is no record of the interpretation put 
upon Shylock in Shakspere's day in his Globe theatre, 
yet, on account of the ferocity of the anti-Jewish preju- 
dice of the time, the first interpretation given above, tem- 
pered a very little if at all by the third, is, presumably, 
the only one consonant with the spirit of the age. 

In 1594, about the time that The Merchant of Venice 
was written, or a year or two earlier, a Jewish physician, 
Eoderigo Lopez, who had been physician to Lord Leices- 
ter and also to Queen Elizabeth herself, had been hanged 
on ' Tyburn Tree ' for alleged complicity in a plot to 
poison the Queen. The publication of five official ac- 
counts of the alleged treason kept public interest at a 
high pitch. In this year, 1594, Marlowe's Jew of Malta 
was given at least twenty times after the execution of 



44 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

Lopez— a play in which the Jew is made an inhuman mon- 
ster. Gosson's Schoole of Abuse, printed in 1579, refers to 
a play now lost, " The Jew, . . . showne at the Bull, . . . 
representing the greedinesse of worldly chusers, and 
bloody mindes of Usurers/' which may possibly have sug- 
gested to Shakspere the point of view, or the point of 
departure at least, for a play containing a cruel and cov- 
etous Jew. 

The attitude of the age toward the Jews is well illus- 
trated by the feeling of Luther, who died but fifty years 
before the play was written, — " Know, then, thou dear 
Christian, that, next to the Devil, thou canst have no bit- 
terer, fiercer foe than a genuine Jew, one who is a Jew in 
earnest. The true counsel I give thee is that fire be put 
to their synagogues, and that over what will not burn up, 
the earth be heaped and piled, so that no stone or trace 
of them be seen for evermore." 

The Jew-hating audience of the day, then, it is held, 
would have hated Shylock with a hate equal to his own, 
and would have yelled with joy at the dog Jew's discom- 
fiture and ruin — to the entire satisfaction of the author, 
whose conception of holding the mirror up to nature in 
the case of the Jews was expressed in the robust language 
of Gratiano, with whom the spectator was assumed to be 
in hearty sympathy. " In including this [the enforced 
conversion to Christianity] among the articles of Shy- 
lock's pardon," says Boas, " Shakspere has shown him- 
self scarcely at all in advance of his age, whose average 
attitude is faithfully reflected in Gratiano's brutal jeers 
and suggestion of i a halter gratis ' as the only mercy fit 
for the Jew." 

But without calling into question the ' joy ' of an audi- 
ence of Shakspere's day at the dog Jew's discomfiture 
and ruin at the close of the trial-scene, there has yet 
been much discussion as to whether Shylock was to the 



INTRODUCTION 45 

audience — before the surprising sentence of the girl-judge 
— a comic character or one to be feared. The question 
at issue has been thus stated in a recent thesis ' on the 
Drama, 

" And here the query intrudes itself : did Shakespeare 
mean the Shylock plot to be comic or not ? It has, in- 
deed, even now a grim kind of comic effect, but we must 
suspect that the Elizabethan audience laughed where we 
do not. Possibly Shakespeare meant him to be comic, 
and without purposing to do so lapsed occasionally into a 
sympathetic treatment simply because he could not help 
doing this with any character that he handled long. 
This would account on the one hand for the hardness of 
tone in the Jessica plot, and on the other hand for the 
sympathetic insight in such passages as Shylock's mag- 
nificent outburst in answer to Salarino : . . . [Hath not a 
Jew eyes? etc.]. 

"According to this interpretation, we see in Shylock, 
despite such passages, our familiar comic victim, grown 
indeed more formidable, and requiring, not the justice 
but the injustice of the law courts to overcome him, but 
the comic victim nevertheless, whose downfall, as in typ- 
ical comedy of intrigue, brings with ib the happiness of 
the lovers. Shakespeare's mistake, then, was in making 
us sympathize too keenly with Shylock, though, as we 
have said, this may not have been the case for his own 
day." 

Gervinus, however, speaks of Shylock's ' frightful ' 
exterior. He describes in some detail " this Jew, whom 
Burbadge in Shakespeare's time acted in a character of 
frightful exterior, with long nose and red hair, and whose 
inward deformity and hardened nature were far less the 
result of religious bigotry than of the most terrible of all 
fanaticism, that of avarice and usury," — an account 
based, it will be understood, not on records but on tradi- 
tion. But notwithstanding this lack of records, Brandes 

1 The Drama, Its Law and its Technique, Elisabeth Woodbridge, 
Allyn and Bacon, Boston, pp. 157-8. 



46 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

has not hesitated to say of Shylock (page 164), " there can 
be no doubt that he appeared to Shakespeare's contempo- 
raries a comic personage," — 

" The central figure of the play, however, in the eye 
of modern readers and spectators, is of course Shylock, 
though there can be no doubt that he appeared to Shake- 
speare's contemporaries a comic personage, and, since he 
makes his final exit before the last act, by no means the 
protagonist. In the humaner view of a later age, Shylock 
appears as a half-pathetic creation, a scapegoat, a victim ; 
to the Elizabethan public, with his rapacity and his mi- 
serliness, his usury and his eagerness to dig for another 
the pit into which he himself falls, he seemed, not ter- 
rible, but ludicrous. They did not even take him seri- 
ously enough to feel any real uneasiness as to Antonio's 
fate, since they all knew beforehand the issue of the ad- 
venture. They laughed when he went to Bassanio's feast 
1 in hate, to feed upon the prodigal Christian ' ; they 
laughed when, in the scene with Tubal, he suffered him- 
self to be bandied about between exultation over An- 
tonio's misfortunes and rage over the prodigality of his 
runaway daughter ; and they found him odious when 
he exclaimed, ' I would my daughter were dead at my 
foot and the jewels in her ear ! ' He was, simply as a 
Jew, a despised creature ; he belonged to the race which 
had crucified God himself ; and was doubly despised as 
an extortionate usurer." 

Mabie in a recent treatise 1 has written, "For many 
years the part was played in a spirit of broad and boister- 
ous farce, and the audience jeered at the lonely and tragic 
figure." Boas also is of the opinion that the audiences 
of the day showed little Christian pity to the dog Jew. 
" The groundlings were far more likely to yell with vo- 
ciferous laughter as they listened to Salanio's account of 
the dog Jew flying through the streets, with all the boys 
of Venice at his heels," etc. 

1 William Shakespeare, Poet, Dramatist, and Man, Hamilton 
Wright Mabie, The Macraillan Company, 1901, p. 254. 



INTRODUCTION 47 

But a consideration that must give the reader pause is 
the opinion of Furness (page 370), " We frequently hear 
it asserted that ' Shylock ' was at one time acted as a 
comic part, an assertion which should not be made with- 
out qualification ; it was not Shylock, but a thing called 
' Shylock ' in Lansdowne's Version. There is no ground 
for the belief that Shylock was ever presented on the 
stage in a comic light. To assert it is to imply that 
Lansdowne's ' Shylock ' and Shakespeare's Shylock are 
identical." 

And yet on page 1 of Furness there is given in the 
textual notes as the heading of the Quartos [1600], " The 
Comicall History of . . . Venice." 

Some Actoes of Shylock 
Whatever, then, may have been the portra} r al of Shy- 
lock in Shakspere's day — whether comic or fearful — in 
1701 at any rate, in the version of the play by George 
Granville, later Earl Lansdowne, it became a distinctively 
' low comedy ' part. But in 1741 Macklin presented the 
text of Shakspere, making the Jew, not comic as in the 
Lansdowne version, but frightful. This portrayal, so 
unlike 1 the conception that had prevailed for forty years, 
was complimented by Alexander Pope .in the couplet, sug- 
gested as Macklin's epitaph, 

" Here lies the Jew 
That Shakespeare drew." 

1 " Although on the score of genius no comparison between the 
two actors [Macklin and Kean] can be made, yet the revival by Kean 
[in 1814] did not imply, perhaps, as great a revolution of popular feel- 
ing as the revival by Macklin. It is one thing to elevate and refine, 
to convert ' snarling malignity ' into the ' depositary of the vengeance 
of a race,' but it is another and a bolder flight, I suggest, to trans- 
form a character, as Macklin transformed Shylock, from the gri- 
raacings of low Comedy to the solemn sweep of Tragedy. This was 
Macklin's achievement " . . . — Furness, p. 346. 



48 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

In 1814 Edmund Kean presented a new 1 Shylock, 
4 the depositary of the vengeance of a race,' essentially 
the Shylock of the second interpretation above, in which 
Shylock at the conclusion of the trial-scene " retired, as 
Shakespeare intended he should retire, with the audience 
possessed in his favour." This conception of the char- 
acter has been given frequently 2 since. 

No more like this conception than jet is to ivory, is, 

1 " When we first went to see Mr. Kean in Shylock, we expected 
to see what we had been used to see, a decrepid old man, bent with 
age and ugly with mental deformity, grinning with deadly malice, 
with the venom of his heart congealed in the expression of his coun- 
tenance, sullen, morose, gloomy, inflexible, brooding over one idea, 
that of his hatred, and fixed on one unalterable purpose, that of his 
revenge. We were disappointed, because we had taken our ideas 
from other actors, not from the play." — Characters of Shakespeare's 
Plays, William Hazlitt, 1817, p. 276. 

" The sudden change of Shylock's whole appearance when the 
cause turned against him ; the happy pause in ' I am — content,' as if it 
almost choked him to bring out the word ; the partial bowing down 
of his inflexible will when he said, 'I pray you give me leave to go 
from hence, I am not weir ; the horror of his countenance when told 
of his enforced conversion to Christianity, and, to crown all, the fine 
mixture of scorn and pity with which he turned and surveyed the 
ribald Gratiano — all exhibited a succession of studies to which words 
fail to do justice. He retired, as Shakespeare intended he should 
retire, with the audience possessed in his favour."— Hawkins, Life 
of Kean. 

2 " I think Macready was the first [ ] ] to lift the uncanny Jew out 
of the darkness of his native element of revengeful selfishness into 
the light of the venerable Hebrew, the Martyr, the Avenger. He has 
had several followers, and I once tried to view him in that light, but 
he doesn't cast a shadow sufficiently strong to contrast with the sun- 
shine of the comedy, — to do which he must, to a certain extent, be 
repulsive, a sort of party that one doesn't care to see among the 

1 An oversight apparentl}\ unless the reference is to the elder Macready. 
William Charles Macready, famous in Shaksperean roles, and famous also in 
connection with the 'Astor Place riot,' was born in 1783. Kean's new Shylock 
was given in 1814. 



INTRODUCTION 49 

or rather was, the portrayal of Shylock as ' the cruelest 
Jew alive,' by Herr Ernst von Possart, now an official of 
the Government in the kingdom of Bavaria, in charge of 
the Miinchen (Munich) Hof theater, under whose direction 
Munich questionless holds a rival place with Bayreuth in 
the adequate rendition of that concord of majestic sound, 
the music of Eichard Wagner. Herr von Possart's Shy- 
lock is the revengeful Jew, portrayed with such power 

dainty revellers of Venice in her prime." — Edwin Booth's letter to 
Furness, Furness, p. 383. 

"Irving evidently believes that Shakespeare intended to enlist 
our sympathies on the side of the Jew, and the conception is embodied 
in a manner altogether new to the stage. The fierceness associated 
with the character since Macklin appeared in it is not absent. Except 
in the scene with Tubal, where passion will out, the bearing of this 
Shylock is distinguished by a comparatively quiet and tranquil 
dignity, — perhaps we ought rather to say the superb dignity of the 
Arabian race. The whole force of an ' old, untainted religious aris- 
tocracy ' is made manifest in his person. He feels and acts as one of a 
lioble but long-oppressed nation, as a representative of Judaism 
ngainst the apostate Galilean, as an instrument of vengeance in the 
hands of an offended God. In point of intelligence and culture he is 
far above the Christians with whom he comes into contact, and the fact 
that as a Jew he is deemed far below them in the social scale ir gall 
and wormwood to his proud and sensitive spirit. . . . Exhibited in 
this light, not so much as a man grievously wronged in his own per- 
son as a representative of a great but oppressed tribe, Shylock 
acquires on the stage what Shakespeare evidently intended to impart 
to the character, — a sad and romantic interest, an almost tragic eleva- 
tion and grace." — The Tlieatre, December, 1879. 

" Some years ago I witnessed a performance of one of Shak- 
spere's plays. The late Lawrence Barrett played the title-role. . . . 
He was the embodiment of the whole Jewish people, driven by 
unending persecutions, by insufferable wrongs and insults and in- 
juries, to a frenzied thirst for revenge. Round upon round of 
applause greeted his efforts, and what struck me as most noteworthy, 
was the fact, that though the audience was almost entirely non- 
Jewish, its sympathies seemed with Shylock. I saw there a most 
eloquent vindication of the Jew." — Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf. 



50 THE MERCHANT OP VENICE 

that when Shylock grasps his knife with the words, 
" A sentence ! Come, prepare ! " the spectator shudders 
even though he knows full well that Portia's ( Tarry a 
little,' 'no jot of blood,' is to follow. But so resistless 
is that ' swollen gush of elemental human passion/ that 
' sublimity of hate which awes by its intensity and gives 
to malignity a character almost of grandeur,' that when 
the face of his Shylock whitens with something akin to 
what has been described as 'the boundless pale rage' 
of Dante's Vanni Fucci and he leaps toward his victim 
with the words, " A sentence ! Come, prepare ! ", the 
spectator, finding it difficult to entertain the supposition 
that even in the anti-Jewish times of good Queen Bess 
the character could be viewed in a comic light, turns 
once more, as often before, to the judgment of ' the 
master of those who know,' firmly believing, for the 
time being at least, with Furness, " there is no ground 
for the belief that Shylock was ever presented on the 
stage in a comic light." 

The Lettee of Herr Ernst von Possart 

Herewith is the letter of Herr von Possart, new come 
from Miinchen : 

Konigl. Bayer. Munchen, den 10 August, 1902. 

Hoftheater-Intendanz. 

Sehr geehrter Herr Professor! 

Zur Veroffentlichung einer Schrift tiber Shakespeare's Kauf- 
mann von Venedig wiinschen Sie meine Ansicht tiber die Auffas- 
sung des Shylock keimen zu lernen. 

Meines Erachtens ist zur richtigen Beurtheilung dieser merk- 
wurdigen Figur vor Allem daran festzuhalten, dass der Dichter in 
Shylock ein historisches Charakterbild aus dem christlichen Mit- 
telalter geschaffen hat, wo der Jude die traurige Rolle eines recht- 
los Pariah spielte; so erklart sich seine in ihm gross gezogene 
Bosheit und Rachsucht, die durch die ganz ungewohnliche Energie 



INTRODUCTION 51 

und den scharfsinnigen stechenden Witz seiner Raisonnements in 
dem interessanten Licht einer bedeutenden menschlichen Eigenart 
erscheinen. 

Da Sie im Winter 92-93 den Shylock von mir selbst gesehen 
haben, so werden Sie aus eigener Anschauung wissen, dass meine 
Auffassung des Juden mit meiner Verkorperung im Einklange 
stent. 

Ueber die Entstehung und die Quellen der Shakespeare'schen 
Schdpfung des Juden finden Sie alles Wichtige in dem umfang- 
reichen Werke ,, William Shakespeare" von dem genialen Diinen 
Georg Brandes. 1 

Hochacbtungsvollst 

Ernst v. Possart. 

now make youe choice — some god direct your 
Judgement 

There have been passed in review the following inter- 
pretations of the character of Shylock, 

(1) Shylock as the bloodthirsty miser, the cut-throat 
dog, the dog Jew, in whose downfall the reader may 
wholly rejoice. 

(2) Shylock as the depositary of the vengeance of a 
race, a man more sinned against than sinning, whose pas- 
sion for revenge is accounted for by the century-long 
brutal treatment accorded to a race proud of its past by 
its Christian oppressors. 

1 For a correct interpretation of this noteworthy figure, this above 
all must, in my judgment, be borne clearly in mind, that in the char- 
acter of Shylock the poet created a historical picture oat of the 
Christian Middle Ages, where the Jew played the sorrowful role of an 
outcast from society beyond the protection of the laws ; and thus is 
explained his intense hatred and passion for revenge, which, by 
means of the unusual power and sharp piercing wit of his discourse, 
show him in the interesting light of a great personality. 

As to the origin and the sources of Shakespeare's conception of 
the Jew you will find all that is of importance in the comprehensive 
work William, Shakespeare by the gifted Dane, George Brandes. 



52 THE MERCHANT OP VENICE 

(3) Shylock as the conventional Jew miser and mon- 
ster, but ' humanized ' by Shakspere's perhaps uncon- 
scious art — Antonio, however, and not Shylock being the 
hero of the play. 

There has also been discussed the effect upon the 
reader's sympathy with the other characters in the play 
of holding the second interpretation of Shylock rather 
than the first — particularly the effect upon the reader's 
attitude toward the Jew's fair daughter, the gentle Jes- 
sica, who now becomes the heartless, runaway daughter 
of an abandoned father, who, false to her father and the 
faith of her fathers, marries an enemy of her race, and 
gives her dead mother's betrothal ring in exchange for a 
monkey. 

There has been presented also the difficulty experi- 
enced by those whose judgment approves of the third 
interpretation of Shylock, as essentially Marlowe's cruel 
miser, the Jew of Malta, but humanized — in certain 
scenes humanized to such an extent as to make the por- 
trayal seem, to some of these interpreters, hardly consist- 
ent, — the inconsistency, however, if felt, being regarded 
as the measure of Shakspere's greatness. 1 

A method of interpretation has been illustrated at 
some length, according to which the play should be read 
in the light of the attitude toward Shylock of Portia and 
her friends, and in the light of the age— a method which 
results in justifying the first conception of Shylock rather 
than the second. 

1 " One characteristic above all belongs by indubitable birthmark 
to every Shakespearian character. It has a certain infinity about it— 
a vague word for a necessarily vague quality. I mean that it opens 
large vistas, and is not exhausted by the enumeration of a few simple 
attributes. There are so many sides to Othello and Macbeth," etc.— 
The Idea of Tragedy in Ancient and Modern Drama, W. L. Court- 
ney, Brentano's, New York, 1900. 



INTRODUCTION 53 

A few references have been made to the interpretation 
of Shylock given upon the stage. 

The reader occupied with the literature of comment 
on The Merchant of Venice, looking here upon this pic- 
ture and on this, will presumably find that his mind is 
for a time, like Antonio's, tossing on the ocean, but it 
may perhaps, like Antonio's ships, come safely into har- 
bor at the last, if he but notes that the attitude of most 
commentators toward all the characters in the play is 
determined largely by their attitude toward Shylock. 
Those who hold to the first interpretation of Shylock, 
will, if consistent, wholly disagree with those who hold to 
the second — not only as to Shylock, but as to Jessica and 
all the other characters in the play. The reader of this 
comment finds it a hopeless task to attempt to reconcile 
these views. The only explanation needed in most cases 
is that the interpreters differ in regard to Shylock. Hav- 
ing once learned the attitude of a critic toward Shylock, 
the reader will in general find little difficulty in anticipating 
the critic's judgments in regard to all the persons in the 
play — and in agreeing with these judgments throughout, 
provided the reader and the critic hold to the same con- 
ception of Shylock. Does the learned expositor seem to 
entertain a kindly feeling toward the gentle daughter, 
whose home to her was * hell ' ? He will then in all proba- 
bility have a fling at her father, the dog Jew, — to the entire 
satisfaction of the reader whose conception of Shylock is 
his ; otherwise, to the reader's entire dissatisfaction. 
Cold indeed and labour lost is all discussion as to Jessica 
by those who differ as to Shylock. 

Thus though no learned Bellario, however urgently 
sent for, hath had or can have wit enough to decide to 
the satisfaction of all the cause in controversy between 
the Jew and Antonio the merchant, yet it is some answer 
to note that the attitude of most interpreters toward all 



54 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

the other characters in the play is determined largely by 
their attitude toward the 4 lodg'd hate ' that Shylock 
bears to Antonio. It is some answer to observe that 
those who hold the conception of Shylock as a merciless 
dog Jew are in general oblivions to the faults of Antonio 
and his friends, and that those who on the contrary 
accept the interpretation of Shylock as more sinned 
against than sinning, laying stress on Antonio's fault in 
that he hates Shylock's sacred nation, excuse Shylock 
when he in return says, " I hate him for he is a Chris- 
tian," and altogether ignore the ' But more ' in Shylock's 
next statement, " But more that in low simplicity He 
lends out money gratis and brings down The rate of 
usance here with us in Venice." 

Xot many sympathize with both Shylock, the aban- 
doned father, and with Jessica, the runaway daughter, 
with Shylock as the representative of a WTonged race and 
with the good Antonio's custom of voiding his rheum on 
Jewish gaberdines. But should an interpreter appear to 
do so, he presumably holds to the third interpretation of 
Shylock, and there is then some uncertainty as to the 
extent of his sympathy with the humanized conventional 
Jew miser. The comment of this interpreter, either as 
to Jessica or as to Shylock, cannot be so easily anticipa- 
ted. He will not make Shylock the hero of the play, and 
yet he may at times be so carried beyond himself in his 
sympathies that with Professor ten Brink his heart 
* justly rebels ' at some feature of the ' justice ' meted out 
to the Jew, whom Shakspere has made ' come so close to 
us humanly ' that the interpreter becomes ' too vividly 
conscious ' of the suffering of the comic victim — a certain 
obliviousness to such suffering being essential to the 
enjoyment of comedy. Hence the denouement or con- 
clusion may not be to this interpreter altogether satis- 
factory, — the conclusion of the play being, as a matter of 



INTRODUCTION 55 

course, altogether satisfactory to those who hold to the 
first interpretation of Shylock, altogether unsatisfactory 
to those who hold the second. 

Another ' necessary question of the play,' viz., whether 
The Merchant of Venice t teaches the most comprehensive 
humanity ' or ' caresses the narrowest bigotries of the 
age,' also depends upon the interpretation adopted by the 
reader. Rabbi Krauskopf, 1 indeed, who sees in the play 
1 a most eloquent vindication of the Jew/ predicts that 
" there will be a yet wider recognition of the play's unhis- 
toric and impossible parts, while its historic part, the 
' sufferance ' of the Jew, will stand as a constant witness 
to the outrages to which the Jew has been subjected, and 
as a constant summons for reparation." Rabbi Lewin- 
thal also is persuaded that " when Shakspere makes such 
coarse and savage handling come from the hero of the 
story, who is otherwise an ideal character, a gentleman, 
one of nature's noblemen, the injustice of the world to 
the Jew is more distinctly brought out," — a consummation 
devoutly to be wished. But that this is the spirit toward 
the Jew in which the play was conceived or that this was 
the attitude toward Shylock which the spectator of Shak- 
pere's day was expected to take cannot for a moment be 
allowed by those who read the play in the light of its 
age or who in reading let their sympathies go where 
they are clearly expected to go. 

A situation, however, which appeals to one age as 
comic may be no longer comic to another age. Indeed of 
contemporary individuals the same situation provokes 
one to mirth and another to tears. " According to the 
standpoint of the observer," says Professor ten Brink, " will 
an action or a situation appear pathetic or laughable — 

1 Joseph Krauskopf, Rabbi Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel, 
Philadelphia. 



56 THE MERCHANT OP VENICE 

the question whether a certain failure or a certain evil 
appears ludicrous, depends not only upon the kind and 
degree of the evil and the extent of its influence, but 
very essentially upon the standpoint of those who happen 
to be the spectators at the time." 

The passing away of the wretched mediaeval prejudice 
against the Jews may indeed, then, affect the attitude of 
the modern reader toward the characters and the situa- 
tion in The Merchant of Venice, though it cannot affect 
the spirit in which the play was conceived. To catch 
this spirit clearly is unquestionably the first task of liter- 
ary criticism, when dealing with this play, the prime 
requisite for an interpretation of the meaning and sig- 
nificance of the play as a whole. The reader of the liter- 
ature of comment on The Merchant of Venice who reads 
this comment to good purpose in the spirit of Bacon's 
advice, viz., to read not to contradict and confute, nor to 
believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and dis- 
course, but to weigh and consider, may possibly be so 
assisted thereby that at the last, his tormentors having 
taught him answers for deliverance, he will exclaim with 
Bassanio, and with a like happy result, 

' And here choose I : joy be the consequence ! ' 



THE MEKCHAOT OF VENICE 



DRAMATIS PERSONS 

The Duke of Venice. 

The Prince of Morocco, ) „ . 

m ^, . f suitors to Portia. 

The Prince of Arragon, J 

Antonio, a merchant of Venice. 

Bassanio, Ms friend, suitor likewise to Portia. 

Salanio, \ 

Salarino, I friends to Antonio and Bassanio. 

Gratiano, ) 

Lorenzo, in love with Jessica. 

Shylock, a rich Jew. 

Tubal, a Jew, his friend. 

Launcelot Gobbo, the clown, servant to Shylock. 

Old Gobbo, father to Launcelot. 

Leonardo, servant to Bassanio. 

Balthasar, ) , A „ x . 

c servants to Portia. 
Stephano, ) 

Portia, a rich heiress. 
Nerissa, her waiting-maid. 
Jessica, daughter to Shylock. 

Magnificoes of Venice, Officers of the Court of Justice, Gaoler, 
Servants to Portia, and other Attendants. 

Scene : Partly at Venice, and partly at Belmont, the seat of Portia, 
on the Continent. 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 



ACT I. 

Scene I. Venice. A street. 
Enter Antonio, Salakino, and Salanio. 

Antonio. In sooth, I know not why I am so sad : 
It wearies me ; you say it wearies you ; 
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, 
What stuff 't is made of, whereof it is born, 
I am to learn ; 

And such a want-wit sadness makes of me, 
That I have much ado to know myself. 

Salarino. Your mind is tossing on the ocean ; 
There, where your argosies with portly sail, 
Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, 10 

Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea, 
Do overpeer the petty traffickers, 

9. argosy (plural argosies). "A large merchant vessel, especially one 
carrying a rich freight" {The Century Dictionary), portly, swelling. 

10. signiors, lords or gentlemen. Cf. "Most potent, grave, and rev- 
erend signiors," Othello, i. 3. 77. burghers, inhabitants of a burgh or 
borough, i. e., citizens. 

11. pageants,— originally the stages or platforms drawn about the 
streets for the miracle plays — somewhat like the ' floats ' in modern 
parades or street processions. 

12. overpeer, — "look down with haughty superiority upon the vessels 
engaged in petty traffic, which bow with humility to them, as the si- 
gniors and rich burghers look down upon their humbler fellow-citizens, 
who doff their caps to them when meeting them in the street " (Deighton ). 

59 



60 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. Sc. i. 

That curtsy to them, do them reverence, 
As they fly by them with their woven wings. 
1/ Salanio. Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth, 
The better part of my affections would 
Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still 
Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind, 
Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads ; 
And every object that might make me fear 20 

Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt 
AVould make me sad. 

Salarino. My wind cooling my broth 

Would blow me to an ague, when I thought 
What harm a wind too great at sea might do. 
I should not see the sandy hour-glass run, 
But I should think of shallows and of flats, 
And see my wealthy Andrew dock'd in sand, 
Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs 
To kiss her burial. * Should I go to church 
And see the holy edifice of stone, 30 

And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks, 
Wliich touching but my gentle vessel's side, 
Would scatter all her spices on the stream, 
Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks, 
And, in a word, but even now worth this, 
And now worth nothing ? Shall I have the thought 
To think on this, and shall I lack the thought 
That such a thing bechanced would make me sad ? 

13. curtsy. "Suggested by the rocking, ducking motion in the petty 
traffiquers caused by the wake of the argosie as it sails past them" 
(Furness). 

17. still, constantly, ever. 

28. Vailing, letting fall, lowering. Cf. from Marlowe's Jew of Malta, 

" Now vail your pride, you captive Christians, 
And kneel for mercy to your conquering foe." 

29. her burial, i. e., her burial place, the sand bank in which she was 
' docked.' 

32. touching but, merely touching. 



Act I. Sc. i.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 61 

But tell not me ; I know, Antonio 

Is sad to think upon his merchandise. 40 

Antonio. Believe me, no : I thank my fortune for it, 
My ventures are not in one bottom trusted, 
Nor to one place ; nor is my whole estate 
Upon the fortune of this present year : 
Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad. 

Salarino. Why, then you are in love. 

Antonio. Fie, fie ! 

Salarino. Not in love neither ? Then let us say you 
are sad, 
Because you are not merry : and 'twere as easy 
For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry, 
Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus, 50 
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time : 
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes 
And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper, 
And other of such vinegar aspect 
That they '11 not show their teeth in way of smile, 
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable. 

Enter Bassanio, Lorenzo, and Geatiano. 

Salanio. Here comes Bassanio, your most noble 
kinsman, 
Gratiano and Lorenzo. Fare ye well : 
We leave you now with better company. 

Salarino. I would have stay'd till I had made you 
merry, 60 

If worthier friends had not prevented me. 

Antonio. Your worth is very dear in my regard. 

40. sad to think upon, i. e., sad in thinking upon. See Abbott, 356, 
for a statement as to how to came to be used " in other and more indefi- 
nite senses, 'for,' 'about,' 'in,' 'as regards,' and, in a word, for any 
form of the gerund as well as for the infinitive." 

52. peep through their eyes,— their eyes being half shut with laughter. 

54. other, — a (proper) plural form. See Abbott, 12. aspect'. 

61. prevented me, i. e., anticipated me. 



62 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. Sc. i. 

I take it, your own business calls on you 
And you embrace the occasion to depart. 

Salarino. Good morrow, my good lords. 

Bassanio. Good signiors both, when shall we laugh ? 
say, when ? 
You grow exceeding strange : must it be so ? 

Salarino. We'll make our leisures to attend on yours. 
[Exeunt Salariko and Salanio. 

Lorenzo. My Lord Bassanio, since you have found 
Antonio, 
We two will leave you : but at dinner-time, 70 

I pray you, have in mind where we must meet. 

Bassanio. I will not fail you. 

Gratiano. You look not well, Signior Antonio ; 
You have too much respect upon the world : 
They lose it that do buy it with much care : 
Believe me, you are marvellously changed. 

Antonio. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano ; 
A stage where every man must play a part, 
And mine a sad one. 

Gratiano. Let me play the fool : 

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come, so 

And let my liver rather heat with wine 
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. 
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, 
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster? 
Sleep when he wakes and creep into the jaundice 
By being peevish ? I tell thee what, Antonio — 

74. respect upon the world, i. e., regard for the world. 

75. They lose it. " 'It' refers to the opinion of the world " (Furness). 
79. play the fool, ?'. e., play the part of Fool, or banisher of sadness, on 

the stage of life. It will be remembered that Shakspere's Fools are not 
mere buffoons. Celia said of Touchstone after the banishment of Rosa- 
lind (in As You Like It), "He'll go along o'er the wide world with 
me"; and it was said of the Fool in Lear, "Since my young lady's 
going into France, sir. the fool hath much pined away." 



Act I. Sc. i.] THE MERCHANT OP VENICE 63 

I love thee, and it is my love that speaks— 

There are a sort of men whose visages 

Do cream and mantle like a standing pond, 

And do a wilful stillness entertain, 90 

With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion 

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit, 

As who should say ' I am Sir Oracle, 

And when I ope my lips let no dog bark ' ! 

my Antonio, I do know of these 
That therefore only are reputed wise 

For saying -nothing, when, I am very sure, 

If they should speak, would almost damn those ears 

Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools. 

I'll tell thee more of this another time : 100 

But fish not, with this melancholy bait, C-/ 

For this fool gudgeon, this opinion. 

Come, good Lorenzo. Fare ye well awhile : 

I'll end my exhortation after dinner. 

Lorenzo. Well, we will leave you then till dinner-time : 

1 must be one of these same dumb wise men, 
For Gratiano never lets me speak. 

Gratiano. Well, keep me company but two years moe, 
Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue. 
Antonio. Farewell : I'll grow a talker for this gear, no 

89. cream and mantle. Cf. "drinks the green mantle of the standing 
pool," Lear, iii. 4. 139. 

90. And do, i. e., And who do. "The Elizabethan authors objected to 
scarcely any ellipsis, provided the deficiency could be easily supplied from 
the context" (Abbott, 382). a wilful stillness entertain, etc., i. e., main- 
tain an obstinate silence in order to get a reputation ( ' an opinion ' ) for 
wisdom and for profound thought (' conceit '), and all by saying nothing. 

98. would damn, i. e., they would damn. See Matt, v : 22. 

101. this melancholy bait, this bait of melancholy. 

102. gudgeon, a small fish easily caught, — and not worth catching. 
108. moe, more. 

110. for this gear, 'for this particular occasion' (Eccles), — the dinner 
arranged for, that is ; ' a colloquial expression perhaps of no very deter- 



64 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. Sc. i. 

Graliano. Thanks, i'faith, for silence is only commend- 
able 
In a neat's tongue dried and a maid not vendible. 

[Exeunt Gratiano and Lorenzo. 

Antonio. Is that anything now? 

Bassanio. Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, 
more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two 
grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff : you shall seek 
all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they 
are not worth the search. 

Antonio. Well, tell me now what lady is the same 
To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage, 120 

That you to-day promised to tell me of ? 

Bassanio. 'Tis not unknown to you, Antonio, 
How much I have disabled mine estate, 
By something showing a more swelling port 
Than my faint means would grant continuance : 
Nor do I now make moan to be abridged 
From such a noble rate ; but my chief care 
Is to come fairly off from the great debts 
Wherein my time something too prodigal 
Hath left me gaged. To you, Antonio, 130 

I owe the most, in money and in love, 
And from your love I have a warranty 

minate import' (Stevens); 'the sense demanded by the context must in 
each case be our guide' (Furness). Cf. ii. 2. 176. 

112. neat's tongue, ox tongue, not vendible, — "for whose love no one 
would care to give anything" (Deighton). 

124-5. something-, somewhat (Abbott, 68). swelling" port, imposing 
appearance, style of living. Cf. ' portly sail,' i. 1. 9 ; ' the name and port 
of gentleman,' 2 Henry VI. iv. 1. 19. continuance, continuance of, — i. e., 
"displaying to some extent a greater magnificence in my manner of liv- 
ing than my slender means would allow of my keeping up" (Deighton ). 

126. to be abridged, i. e., about being abridged. See foot-note to line 
40 above. 

129. my time, my life ; or possibly the springtime of life, youth. 

130. gaged, pledged. 



Act I. Sc. i.] THE MERCHANT OP VENICE 65 

To unburden all my plots and purposes 
How to get clear of all the debts I owe. 

Ant o?iio. I pray you, good Bassanio, let me know it ; 
And if it stand, as you yourself still do, 
Within the eye of honour, be assured, 
My purse, my person, my extremest means, 
Lie all unlock'd to your occasions. 

Bassanio. In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft, 
I shot his fellow of the self-same flight 141 

The self-same way with more advised watch, 
To find the other forth, and by adventuring both 
I oft found both : I urge this childhood proof, 
Because what follows is pure innocence. 
I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth, 
That which I owe is lost ; but if you please 
To shoot another arrow that self way 
Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt, 
As I will watch the aim, or to find both 150 

Or bring your latter hazard back again 
And thankfully rest debtor for the first. 

Antonio. You know me well, and herein spend but time 
To wind about my love with circumstance ; 
And out of doubt you do me now more wrong 
In making question of my uttermost 
Than if you had made waste of all I have : 
Then do but say to me what I should do 
That in your knowledge may by me be done, 
And I am prest unto it : therefore, speak. ieo 

Bassanio. In Belmont is a lady richly left ; 
And she is fair and, fairer than that word, 

137. Within the eye of honour, within the scope or range or limit of 
honour's vision. 

144. proof, experiment. 

154. to wind about, in winding about (Abbott, 356). circumstance, 
circumlocution, 'going about the bush ' (Furness). 

160. prest, ready, prompt. 
5 



66 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. Sc. ii. 

Of wondrous virtues : sometimes from her eyes 

I did receive fair speechless messages : 

Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued 

To Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia : 

Xor is the wide world ignorant of her worth, 

For the four winds blow in from every coast 

Eenowned suitors, and her sunny locks 

Hang on her temples like a golden fleece ; 170 

Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos' strand, 

And many Jasons come in quest of her. 

my Antonio, had I but the means 
To hold a rival place with one of them, 

1 have a mind presages me such thrift, 
That I should questionless be fortunate ! 

Antonio. Thou know'st that all my fortunes are at sea ; 
Neither have I money nor commodity 
To raise a present sum : therefore go forth ; 
Try what my credit can in Venice do : iso 

That shall be rack'd, even to the uttermost, 
To furnish thee to Belmont, to fair Portia. 
Go, presently inquire, and so will I, 
Where money is, and I no question make 
To have it of my trust or for my sake. [Exeunt. 

Scene II. Belmont. A room in Portia's house. 
Enter Poetia and Nerissa. 
Portia. By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary 
of this great world. 

163. sometimes, formerly. 

175. thrift, thriving, i. e., success. ' The relative is frequently omit- 
ted ' (Abbott, 244). 

183. presently, at once, immediately. 

185. of, 'as a consequence of (Abbott, 168). my trust, my credit (as 
a man of wealth). 

1. "Portia,. . . the most perfect of his creations." — Furness, p. 224. 
" Portia's nature is health, its utterance joy. Radiant happiness 



Act I. Sc. ii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 67 

Nerissa. You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries 
were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are : 
and yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with 
too much as they that starve with nothing. It is no 
mean happiness therefore, to be seated in the mean: 
superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency 
lives longer. 10 

Portia. Good sentences and well pronounced. 

JVerissa. They would be better, if well followed. 

Portia. If to do were as easy as to know what were 
good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men's 
cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows 
his own instructions : I can easier teach twenty what 
were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow 
mine own teaching. The brain may devise laws for the 
blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree : such a 
hare is madness the youth, to skip o'er the meshes of 

9. comes sooner by. Cf. i. 1. 3. but, "I cannot say that I see the 
force of this adversative ' but ;' Hanmer changed it to and, which seems 
the more fitting word " (Furness). 

11. Good sentences, good maxims. 

is her element. She is descended from happiness, she has grown up 
in happiness, she is surrounded with all the means and conditions of 
happiness, and she distributes happiness with both hands. She is 
noble to the heart's core. She is no swan born in the duck-yard, but 
is in complete harmony with her surroundings and with herself." — 
Brandes, p. 162. 

" Although Portia is heart-whole, yet she is not ' fancy free.' We 
learn from Nerissa that in her father's time there was one visitor, a 
' Venitian, a scholar, and a soldier,' whom Nerissa considered of all 
men the ' best deserving a fair lady.' Portia responds very briefly, 
but suggestively : ' I remember him well ; and I remember him worthy 
of thy praise.' Often, no doubt, has she wondered why he has not 
presented himself among her suitors. Unconsciously, perhaps, the 
languor of hope deferred speaks in these first words we hear from 
her. The one who she thought might possibly have been among the 
first comers, comes not at all " (Lady Martin). 



68 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. Sc. ii. 

good counsel the cripple. But this reasoning is not in 
the fashion to choose me a husband. me, the word 
1 choose ' ! I may neither choose whom I would nor refuse 
whom I dislike ; so is the will of a living daughter curbed 
by the will of a dead father. Is it not hard, Nerissa, that 
I cannot choose one nor refuse none ? 29 

Nerissa. Your father was ever virtuous ; and holy men 
at their death have good inspirations : therefore the lot- 
tery, that he hath devised in these three chests of gold, 
silver and lead, whereof who chooses his meaning chooses 
you, will, no doubt, never be chosen by any rightly but one 
who shall rightly love. But what warmth is there in 
your affection towards any of these princely suitors that 
are already come ? 

Portia. I pray thee, over-name them; and as thou 
namest them, I will describe them ; and, according to my 
description, level at my affection. 41 

Nerissa. First, there is the Neapolitan prince. 

Portia. Ay, that's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing 
but talk of his horse ; and he makes it a great appropria- 
tion to his own good parts, that he can shoe him himself. 
I am much afeard my lady his mother played false with a 
smith. 

Nerissa. Then there is the County Palatine. 49 

Portia. He doth nothing but frown, as who should say 

23. reasoning, conversation, talk. Cf. ii. 8. 27. 
41. level at, aim at, guess. 

44. colt, ' a witless, heady, gay youngster ' (Johnson). 
46. appropriation to, addition to. 

30. holy men . . . good inspirations. 'This word of simple faith 
from Nerissa lifts the casket lottery above the region of chance into 
that of divine guidance ' (Katherine Lee Bates). 

50. nothing hnt frown. " The frown of the County Palatine seems 
to say: 'If you will not have ME, Heaven can offer nothing further. 
Choose as you can where nothing is left worth the choosing'" (Kath- 
erine Lee Bates). 



Act I. Sc. ii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 69 

• If you will not have me, choose ' : he hears merry tales 
and smiles not : I fear he will prove the weeping philoso- 
pher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sad- 
ness in his youth. I had rather to be married to a death's- 
head with a bone in his mouth than to either of these. 
God defend me from these two ! 

Nerissa. How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le 
Bon? 

Portia. God made him, and therefore let him pass for 
a man. In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker : but, 
he ! why, he hath a horse better than the Neapolitan's, a 
better bad habit of frowning than the Count Palatine ; he 
is every man in no man ; if a throstle sing, he falls 
straight a capering : he will fence with his own shadow : 
if I should marry him, I should marry twenty husbands. 
If he would despise me, I would forgive him, for if he 
love me to madness, I shall never requite him. 70 

Nerissa. What say you, then, to Falconbridge, the 
young baron of England ? 

Portia. You know I say nothing to him, for he under- 
stands not me, nor I him : he hath neither Latin, French, 
nor Italian, and you will come into the court and swear 
that I have a poor pennyworth in the English. He is a 
proper man's picture, but, alas, who can converse with a 
dumb-show ? How oddly he is suited ! I think he 
bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his 
bonnet in Germany and his behaviour every where. 82 

Nerissa. What think you of the Scottish lord, his 
neighbour ? 

Portia. That he hath a neighbourly charity in him, for 

77. proper, handsome. Cf. "This Lodovico is a proper man. — A very- 
handsome man." — Othello, iv. 3. 35. 
79. suited, dressed. 

51. * If you will not have me, choose.' For various interpretations, 
see Furness. 



70 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. Sc. ii. 

he borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman and 
swore he would pay him again when he was able : I think 
the Frenchman became his surety and sealed under for 
another. 

Nerissa. How like you the young German, the Duke 
of Saxony's nephew ? 91 

Portia. Very vilely in the morning, when he is sober, 
and most vilely in the afternoon, when he is drunk : when 
he is best, he is a little worse than a man, and when he in 
worst, he is little better than a beast : and the worst fall 
that ever fell, I hope I shall make shift to go without him. 

JVerissa. If he should offer to choose, and choose the 
right casket, you should refuse to perform your father's 
will, if you should refuse to accept him. 

Portia. Therefore, for fear of the worst, I pray thee, 
set a deep glass of rhenish wine on the contrary casket, 
for if the devil be within and that temptation without, I 
know he will choose it. I will do any thing, Xerissa, ere 
I'll be married to a sponge. ios 

Nerissa. You need not fear, lady, the having any of 
these lords : they have acquainted me with their deter- 
minations ; which is, indeed, to return to their home and 
to trouble you with no more suit, unless you may be won 
by some other sort than your father's imposition depend- 
ing on the caskets. 

Portia. If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as 
chaste as Diana, unless I be obtained by the manner of 
my father's will. I am glad this parcel of wooers are so 
reasonable, for there is not one among them but I dote 
on his very absence, and I pray God grant them a fair 
departure. 

89. sealed under for another, i. e., for another box on the ear to be 
given the Englishman in repayment. 

100. yon shonld (i. e., would) refuse to perform. See Abbott, 322. 
114. your father's imposition, the conditions imposed by your father. 



Act I. Sc. iii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 71 

Werissa. Do you not remember, lady, in your father's 
time, a Venetian, a scholar and a soldier, that came hither 
in company of the Marquis of Montferrat ? 

Portia. Yes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, he was 
so called. 

JSferissa. True, madam : he, of all the men that ever 
my foolish eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a 
fair lady. 131 

Portia. I remember him well, and I remember him 
worthy of thy praise. 

Enter a Serving-man. 
How now ! what news ? 

Servant. The four strangers seek for you, madam, to 
take their leave : and there is a forerunner come from a 
fifth, the Prince of Morocco, who brings word the prince 
his master will be here to-night. 139 

Portia. If I could bid the fifth welcome with so good 
a heart as I can bid the other four farewell, I should be 
glad of his approach : if he have the condition of a 
saint and the complexion of a devil, I had rather he 
should shrive me than wive me. 
Come, Nerissa. Sirrah, go before. 

Whiles we shut the gates upon one wooer, another knocks 
at the door. [Exeunt. 

Scene III. Venice. A pub" lie place. 
Enter Bassanio a?id Shylock. 
Sliylock. Three thousand ducats ; well. 
Bassanio. Ay, sir, for three months. 
Shylock. For three months ; well. 
143. the condition, the disposition. 

127-133. " There is no hesitation, no coquetry in Portia's words, 
although some actresses seem to think it in place. Nothing could be 
finer than the simplicity of ' I remember him well ' " (Gummere). 



72 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. Sc. iii. 

Bassanio. For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall 
be bound. 

Shyloclc. Antonio shall become bound ; well. 

Bassanio. May you stead me? will you pleasure me? 
shall I know your auswer ? 

Shyloclc. Three thousand ducats, for three months, and 
Antonio bound. 10 

Bassanio. Your answer to that. 

Shyloclc. Antonio is a good man. 

Bassanio. Have you heard any imputation to the con- 
trary ? 

Shyloclc. Oh, no, no, no, no : my meaning in saying he 
is a good man is to have you understand me that he is 
sufficient. Yet his means are in supposition : he hath 
an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies; I 
understand, moreover, upon the Eialto, he hath a third 
at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he 
hath, squandered abroad. But ships are but boards, 
sailors but men : there be land-rats and water-rats, water- 
thieves and land-thieves, I mean pirates, and then there 
is the peril of waters, winds and rocks. The man is, not- 
withstanding, sufficient. Three thousand ducats ; I think 
I may take his bond. 28 

Bassanio. Be assured you may. 

Shyloclc. I will be . assured I may ; and, that I may be 
assured, I will bethink me. May I speak with Antonio ? 

Bassanio. If it please you to dine with us. 

Shyloclc. Yes, to smell pork ; to eat of the habitation 
which your prophet the ^"azarite conjured the devil into. 
I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk 
with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you, 
drink with you, nor pray with you. What news on the 
Eialto? Who is he comes here? 40 

7. May you, 'Can you ' (Eolfe), 'Are you willing?' (Furness). stead 
me, assist me. 



Act I. Sc. iii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 73 

Enter Aktonio. 

Bassanio. This is Signior Antonio. 

Shylock. [Aside] How like a fawning publican he looks ! 
I hate him for he is a Christian, 
But more for that in low simplicity 
He lends out money gratis and brings down 
The rate of usance here with us in Venice. 
If I can catch him once upon the hip, 
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. 
He hates our sacred nation, and he rails, 
Even there where merchants most do congregate, 50 

On me, my bargains and my well-won thrift, 
Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe, 
If I forgive him ! 

Bassanio. Shylock, do you hear ? 

Shylock. I am debating of my present store, 
And, by the near guess of my memory, 
I cannot instantly raise up the gross 
Of full three thousand ducats. What of that ? 
Tubal, a wealthy Hebrew of my tribe, 
Will furnish me. But soft ! how many months 
Do you desire ? [To Ant.] Eest you fair, good signior ; eo 
Your worship was the last man in our mouths. 

Antonio. Shylock, although I neither lend nor borrow 
By taking nor by giving of excess, 
Yet, to supply the ripe wants of my friend, 
I'll break a custom. Is he yet possess'd 
How much ye would ? 

Shylock. Ay, ay, three thousand ducats. 

Antonio. And for three months. 

43. for, because. 

46. usance, interest. 

63. excess, interest, that is, the sum paid in excess of the amount 
loaned. 

65. possess'd, informed. Cf. iv. 1. 35, "I have possess'd your grace 
of what I purpose." 
6 



74 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. Sc. iii. 

Shylock. I had forgot ; three months ; you told me so. 
"Well then, your bond ; and let me see ; but hear you ; 
Methought you said you neither lend nor borrow 70 

Upon advantage. 

Antonio, I do never use it. 

Shylock. When Jacob grazed his uncle Laban's sheep — 
This Jacob from our holy Abram was, 
As his wise mother wrought in his behalf, 
The third possessor ; ay, he was the third — L- 

Antonio. And what of him ? did he take interest ? 

Shylock. No, not take interest, not, as you would say, 
Directly interest : mark what Jacob did. 
When Laban and himself were compromised 
That all the eanlings which were streaked and pied so 
Should fall as Jacob's hire, 
The skilful shepherd peel'd me certain wands 
And stuck them up before the fulsome ewes, 
Who, then conceiving, did in eaning time 
Fall parti-colour'd lambs, and those were Jacob's. 
This was a way to thrive, and he was blest ; 90 

And thrift is blessing, if men steal it not. 

Antonio. This was a venture, sir, that Jacob served for ; 
A thing not in his power to bring to pass, 
But sway'd and fashion'd by the hand of heaven. 
Was this inserted to make interest good ? 
Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams? 

Shylock. I cannot tell ; I make it breed as fast : 
But note me, signior. 

Antonio. Mark you this, Bassanio, 

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. 
An evil soul producing holy witness 10 ° 

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, 

74. As his wise mother, for so his wise mother. 

79. compromised, mutually agreed. 

95. Was this inserted,— in Scripture, that is. 



Act I. Sc. iii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 75 

A goodly apple rotten at the heart : 

0, what a goodly outside falsehood hath ! 

Shylock. Three thousand ducats ; 'tis a good round sum. 
Three months from twelve ; then, let me see ; the rate — 

Antonio. Well, Shylock, shall we be beholding to you ? 
(^ Shylock y&igmov Antonio, many a time and oft ^ 
In the Eialto you have rated me 
About my moneys and my usances : 

Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, no 

For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. 
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, 
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine, 
And all for use of that which is mine own. 
Well then, it now appears you need my help : 
Go to, then ; you come to me, and you say 
' Shylock, we would have moneys ' : you say so ; 
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard 
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur 
Over your threshold : moneys is your suit. 120 

What should I say to you ? Should I not say 
4 Hath a dog money ? is it possible 
A cur can lend three thousand ducats ' ? Or 
Shall I bend low and in a bondman's key, 
With bated breath and whispering humbleness, 
Say this ; 

* Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last ; 
You spurn'd me such a day ; another time 
You call'd me dog ; and for these courtesies 
£ I'll lend you thus much moneys '? 130 

Antonio. I am as like to call thee so again, 
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too. 
If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not 
As to thy friends ; for when did friendship take 
A breed of barren metal of his friend ? 
But lend it rather to thine enemy, 



T6 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. Sc. iii. 

Who, if he break, thou mayst with better face 
Exact the penalty. 

Shylock. Why, look you, how you storm ! 

I would be friends with you and have your love, 
Forget the shames that you have stain'd me with, uo 

Supply your present wants and take no doit 
Of usance for my moneys, and you'll not hear me : 
This is kind I offer. 

Bassanio. This were kindness. 

Shylock. This kindness will I show. 

Go with me to a notary, seal me there 
Your single bond ; and, in a merry sport, 
If you repay me not on such a day, 
In such a place, such sum or sums as are 
Expressed in the condition, let the forfeit 
Be nominated for an equal pound 150 

Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken 
In what part of your body pleaseth me. 

Antonio. Content, i'faith : I'll seal to such a bond 
And say there is much kindness in the Jew. 

Bassanio. You shall not seal to such a bond for me : 
I'll rather dwell in my necessity. 

Antonio. Why, fear not, man ; I will not forfeit it : 
Within these two months, that's a month before 
This bond expires, I do expect return 160 

Of thrice three times the value of this bond. 

Shylock. father Abram, what these Christians are, 
Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect 
The thoughts of others ! Pray you, tell me this ; 
If he should break his day, what should I gain 
By the exaction of the forfeiture ? 
A pound of man's flesh taken from a man 
Is not so estimable, profitable neither, 

150. an equal pound, an exact pound. 
156. dwell, remain, continue. 



Act I. Sc. iii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 77 

As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats. I say, 

To buy his favour, I extend this friendship : 

If he will take it, so ; if not, adieu ; 170 

And, for my love, I pray you wrong me not. 

Antonio. Yes, Shylock, I will seal unto this bond. 

Shyloch. Then meet me forthwith at the notary's ; 
Give him direction for this merry bond, 
And I will go and purse the ducats straight, 
See to my house, left in the fearful guard 
Of an unthrifty knave, and presently 
I will be with you. 

Antonio. Hie thee, gentle Jew. [Exit Shylock. 

The Hebrew will turn Christian: he grows kind. 

Bassanio. I like not fair terms and a villain's mind, iso 

Antonio. Come on : in this there can be no dismay ; 
My ships come home a month before the day. [Exeunt. 

171. And, for my love, ' And as for my good will, my friendly motives, 
I pray you wrong me not by your suspicions.' 
176. fearful guard, untrustworthy guard. 



ACT II. 

Scene I. Belmont. A room in Portia's liouse. 

Flourish of Cornets. Enter the Prince of Morocco and 
his train ; Portia, Neriss a, and others attending. 

Morocco. Mislike me not for my complexion, 
The shadow'd livery of the burnish'd sun, 
To whom I am a neighbour and near bred. 
Bring me the fairest creature northward born, 
Where Phoebus' fire scarce thaws the icicles, 
And let us make incision for your love, 
To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine. 
I tell thee, lady, this aspect of mine 
Hath fear'd the valiant : by my love, I swear 
The best-regarded virgins of our clime 10 

Have loved it too : I would not change this hue, 
Except to steal your thoughts, my gentle queen. 

Portia. In terms of choice I am not solely led 
By nice direction of a maiden's eyes ; 
Besides, the lottery of my destiny 
Bars me the right of voluntary choosing : 
But if my father had not scanted me, 
And hedged me by his wit, to yield myself 

2. The shadow'd livery, " the dark livery put upon me by the bright 
sun ; he speaks of himself as the retainer, servant, of the sun, and of his 
colour as the garb of his service" (Deighton). 

7. blood is reddest, — red blood being considered an indication of cour- 
age, whereas cowards have ' livers white as milk,' iii. 2. 86. 

9. fear'd, frightened. 

14. nice, fastidious. 

17. scanted, limited. 

18. wit, wisdom, foresight. 

78 



Act II. Sc. i.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 79 

His wife who wins me by that means I told you, 
Yourself, renowned prince, then stood as fair 20 

As any comer I have looked on yet 
For my affection. 

Morocco. Even for that I thank you : 

Therefore, I pray you, lead me to the caskets 
To try my fortune. By this scimitar 
That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince 
That won three fields of Sultan Solyman, 
I would outstare the sternest eyes that look, 
Outbrave the heart most daring on the earth, 
Pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear, 
Yea, mock the lion when he roars for prey, 30 

To win thee, lady. But, alas the while ! 
If Hercules and Lichas play at dice 
Which is the better man, the greater throw 
May turn by fortune from the weaker hand : 
So is Alcides beaten by his page ; 
And so may I, blind fortune leading me, 
Miss that which one unworthier may attain, 
And die with grieving. 

Portia. You must take your chance, 

And either not attempt to choose at all 
Or swear before you choose, if you choose wrong 40 

Never to speak to lady afterward 
In way of marriage : therefore be advised. 

Morocco. Nor will not. Come, bring me unto my chance. 

Portia. First, forward to the temple : after dinner 
Your hazard shall be made. 

Morocco. Good fortune then ! 

To make me blest or cursed'st among men. 

[Cornets, and exeunt. 

25. the Sophy, the * Emperour,' i. e., the Shah, of Persia. 
46. blest, ' the force of the superlative in cursed'st retroacts on blest ' 
(Hudson). See Abbott, 398. 



80 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Sc. ii. 

Scene II. Venice. A street. 
Enter Launcelot. 
Launcelot. Certainly my conscience will serve me to 
run from this Jew my master. The fiend is at mine 
elbow and tempts me saying to me * Gobbo, Launcelot 
Gobbo, good Launcelot,' or 'good Gobbo,' or 'good 
Launcelot Gobbo, use your legs, take the start, run away.' 
My conscience says ' Xo ; take heed, honest Launcelot ; 
take heed, honest Gobbo,' or, as aforesaid, ' honest Laun- 
celot Gobbo ; do not run ; scorn running with thy heels.' 
Well, the most courageous fiend bids me pack : ' Via ! ' 
says the fiend ; ' away ! ' says the fiend ; ' for the heavens, 
rouse up a brave mind,' says the fiend, ' and run.' "Well, 
my conscience, hanging about the neck of my heart, says 
very wisely to me ' My honest friend Launcelot, being an 
honest man's son,' or rather an honest woman's son ; for, 
indeed, my father did something smack, something grow 
to, he had a kind of taste ; well, my conscience says 
' Launcelot, budge not.' ' Budge,' says the fiend. ' Budge 
not,' says my conscience. ' Conscience,' say I, ' you coun- 
sel well ' ; ' Fiend,' say I, ' you counsel well ' : to be ruled 
by my conscience, I should stay with the Jew my master, 
who, God bless the mark, is a kind of devil ; and, to run 
away from the Jew, I should be ruled by the fiend, who, 
saving your reverence, is the devil himself. Certainly 
the Jew is the very devil incarnal ; and, in my conscience, 
my conscience is but a kind of hard conscience, to offer 
to counsel me to stay with the Jew. The fiend gives the 

9. scorn running- with thy heels. Cf. " I scorn that with my heels," 
Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 4. 50. 

11. via, away. 

23. to he ruled, i. e., if I were ruled or in being ruled. See Ab- 
bott, 356. 

27. saving- your reverence, i. e., if I may say so. 

28. the very devil incarnal, i. e., incarnate. 



Act II. Sc. ii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 81 

more friendly counsel : I will run, fiend ; my heels are at 

your command ; I will run. 33 

Enter Old Gobbo, with a basket. 

Gobbo. Master young man, you, I pray you, which is the 
way to master Jew's ? 

Launcelot. [Aside] heavens, this is my true-begotten 
father ! who, being more than sand-blind, high-gravel-blind, 
knows me not : I will try confusions with him. 

Gobbo. Master young gentleman, I pray you, which is 
the way to master Jew's ? 41 

Launcelot. Turn up on your right hand at the next 
turning, but, at the next turning of all, on your left; 
marry, at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn 
down indirectly to the Jew's house. 

Gobbo. By God's sonties, 'twill be a hard way to hit. 
Can you tell me whether one Launcelot, that dwells with 
him, dwell with him or no ? 49 

Launcelot. Talk you of young Master Launcelot ? [Aside] 
Mark me now ; now will I raise the waters. Talk you of 
young Master Launcelot ? 

Gobbo. No master, sir, but a poor man's son : his father, 
though I say it, is an honest exceeding poor man and, God 
be thanked, well to live. 55 

Launcelot. Well, let his father be what a' will, we talk 
of young Master Launcelot. 

37. sand-blind, dim-sighted, purblind. Cf. stone-blind. 'Launcelot 
finds a blind between these ' (Capell). 

47. God's sonties, God's saints, perhaps, or God's sanctities. 
51. raise the waters, i. e., 'in his eyes' (Deighton). 

55. well to live, 'with every prospect of a long life' (Furness), 'well 
off' (Hudson). The latter interpretation is given by the German trans- 
lators generally. "The old man is humorously made to contradict him- 
self" (Hudson). Cf. Dogberry's " most tolerable and not to be endured," 
Much Ado, iii. 3. 37, and "condemned into everlasting redemption for 
this," ibid, iv. 2. 58. 

56. what a' will, what he will. "^4' for he is common in the old 
dramatists, in the mouths of peasants and illiterate people " (Eolfe). 



82 THE MERCHANT OP VENICE [Act II. Sc. ii. 

Gdbbo. Your worship's friend and Launcelot, sir. 

Launcelot. But I pray you, ergo, old man, ergo, I be- 
seech you, talk you of young Master Launcelot ? eo 

Gobbo. Of Launcelot, an 't please your mastership. 

Launcelot. Ergo, Master Launcelot. Talk not of Master 
Launcelot, father ; for the young gentleman, according to 
Fates and Destinies and such odd sayings, the Sisters 
Three and such branches of learning, is indeed deceased, 
or, as you would say in plain terms, gone to heaven. 

Gobbo. Marry, God forbid ! the boy was the very staff of 
my age, my very prop. 70 

Launcelot. Do I look like a cudgel or a hovel-post, a 
staff or a prop ? Do you know me, father ? 

Gobbo. Alack the day, I know you not, young gentle- 
man : but, I pray you, tell me, is my boy, God rest his 
soul, alive or dead ? 

Launcelot. Do you not know me, father ? 76 

Gobbo. Alack, sir, I am sand-blind ; I know you not. 

Launcelot. Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might 
fail of the knowing me : it is a wise father that knows his 
own child. Well, old man, I will tell you news of your 
son : give me your blessing : truth will come to light ; 
murder cannot be hid long ; a man's son may, but at the 
length truth will out. 

Gobbo. Pray you, sir, stand up : I am sure you are not 
Launcelot, my boy. 87 

Launcelot. Pray you, let's have no more fooling about 
it, but give me your blessing : I am Launcelot, your boy 
that was, your son that is, your child that shall be. 

Gobbo. I cannot think you are my son. 

Launcelot. I know not what I shall think of that : but I 
am Launcelot, the Jew's man, and I am sure Margery your 
wife is my mother. m 

Gobbo. Her name is Margery, indeed : I'll be sworn, if 

64. father,— formerly used as a title of respect to all old men. 



Act II. Scii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 83 

thou be Launcelot, thou art mine own flesh and blood. 
Lord worshipped might he be ! what a beard hast thou 
got ! thou hast got more hair on thy chin than Dobbin 
my fill-horse has on his tail. 101 

Launcelot. It should seem, then, that Dobbin's tail grows 
backward : I am sure he had more hair of his tail than I 
have of my face when I last saw him. 

Gobbo. Lord, how art thou changed! How dost thou 
and thy master agree ? I have brought him a present. 
How 'gree you now ? ios 

Launcelot. Well, well : but, for mine own part, as I 
have set up my rest to run away, so I will not rest till I 
have run some ground. My master's a very Jew : give 
him a present ! give him a halter : I am famished in his 
service ; you may tell every finger I have with my ribs. 
Father, I am glad you are come : give me your present to 
one Master Bassanio, who, indeed, gives rare new liveries : 
if I serve not him, I will run as far as God has any ground. 

rare fortune ! here comes the man : to him, father ; for 

1 am a Jew, if I serve the Jew any longer. 120 
Enter Bassanio, with Leonakdo and other folloivers. 
Bassanio. You may do so ; but let it be so hasted that 

supper be ready at the farthest by five of the clock. See 
these letters delivered ; put the liveries to making, and 
desire Gratiano to come anon to my lodging. 

[Exit a Servant. 

Launcelot. To him, father. 

Gobbo. God bless your worship ! 

Bassanio. Gramercy ! wouldst thou aught with me ? 12s 

97. thou. " Note Gobbo's respectful ' you,' until he recognizes Launce- 
lot, and then his change to 'thou' " (Furness). See Abbott, 231. 

99. what a beard. Launcelot is kneeling with his back to his sand- 
blind old father. 

100. fill-horse, thill-horse. 

110. set up my rest, determined. 
128. Gramercy, many thanks. 



84 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Sc. ii. 

Gobbo. Here's my son, sir, a poor boy, — 

Launcelot. Not a poor boy, sir, but the rich Jew's man ; 
that would, sir, as my father shall specify — 

Gobbo. He hath a great infection, sir, as one would say, 
to serve, — 

Launcelot. Indeed, the short and the long is, I serve 
the Jew, and have a desire, as my father shall specify — 

Gobbo. His master and he, saving your worship's rever- 
ence, are scarce cater-cousins — 139 

Launcelot. To be brief, the very truth is that the Jew, 
having done me wrong, doth cause me, as my father, 
being, I hope, an old man, shall frutify unto you — 

Gobbo. I have here a dish of doves that I would bestow 
upon your worship, and my suit is — 

Launcelot. In very brief, the suit is impertinent to my- 
self, as your worship shall know by this honest old man ; 
and, though I say it, though old man, yet poor man, my 
father. 

Bassanio. One speak for both. What would you ? 150 

Launcelot. Serve you, sir. 

Gobbo. That is the very defect of the matter, sir. 

Bassanio. I know thee well ; thou hast obtain'd thy suit : 
Shylock thy master spoke with me this day, 
And hath preferr'd thee, if it be preferment 
To leave a rich Jew's service, to become 
The follower of so poor a gentleman. 157 

Launcelot. The old proverb is very well parted between 
my master Shylock and you, sir : you have the grace of 
God, sir, and he hath enough. 

Bassanio. Thou speak'st it well. Go, father, with thy 
son. 

155. preferr'd, recommended ; also promoted, hence preferment, pro- 
motion. 

158. The old proverb, I e., "He that hath the grace of God hath 
enough." 



Act II. Sc. ii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 85 

Take leave of thy old master and inquire 

My lodging out. Give him a livery 

More guarded than his fellows' : see it done. 164 

Launcelot. Father, in. I cannot get a service, no; I 
have ne'er a tongue in my head. Well, if any man in 
Italy have a fairer table which doth offer to swear upon 
a book, I shall have good fortune. Go to, here's a simple 
line of life : here's a small trifle of wives : alas, fifteen 
wives is nothing ! eleven widows and nine maids is a 
simple coming-in for one man : and then to 'scape drown- 
ing thrice, and to be in peril of my life with the edge of 
a feather-bed ; here are simple scapes. Well, if Fortune 
be a woman, she's a good wench for this gear. Father, 
come ; I'll take my leave of the Jew in the twinkling of 
an eye. [Exeunt Launcelot and Old Gobbo. 

Bassanio. I pray thee, good Leonardo, think on this : 
These things being bought and orderly bestow'd, 
Keturn in haste, for I do feast to-night iso 

My best-esteem'd acquaintance : hie thee, go. 

Leonardo. My best endeavours shall be done herein. 

Enter Gbatiano. 

Gratiano. Where is your master ? 

Leonardo. Yonder, sir, he walks. [Exit. 

Gratiano. Signior Bassanio ! 

Bassanio. Gratiano ! 

Gratiano. I have a suit to you. 

Bassiano. You have obtain'd it. 

Gratiano. You must not deny me : I must go with 
you to Belmont. 

Bassanio. Why, then you must. But hear thee, 
Gratiano ; 
Thou art too wild, too rude and bold of voice ; 190 

164. more guarded, more trimmed or ornamented. 

167. a fairer table, — a table, in palmistry, is tbe palm of the hand. 



86 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Sc. ii. 

Parts that become thee happily enough 

And in such eyes as ours appear not faults ; 

But where thou art not known, why, there they show 

Something too liberal. Pray thee, take pain 

To allay with some cold drops of modesty 

Thy skipping spirit, lest through thy wild behaviour 

I be misconstrued in the place I go to 

And lose my hopes. 

Gratiano. Signior Bassanio, hear me : 

If I do not put on a sober habit, 

Talk with respect and swear but now and then, 200 

Wear prayer-books in my pocket, look demurely, 
Nay more, while grace is saying, hood mine eyes 
Thus with my hat, and sigh and say ' amen ', 
Use all the observance of civility, 
Like one well studied in a sad ostent 
To please his grandam, never trust me more. 

Bassanio. Well, we shall see your bearing. 

Gratiano. Nay, but I bar to-night : you shall not 
gauge me 
By what we do to-night. 

Bassanio. No, that were pity : 

I would entreat you rather to put on 210 

Your boldest suit of mirth, for we have friends 
That purpose merriment. But fare you well : 
I have some business. 

Gratiano. And I must to Lorenzo and the rest : 
But we will visit you at supper-time. [Exeunt. 

194. liberal, ' free and easy ' (Furness). 

202. hood mine eyes. " Hats were then worn at meals ; and consistent 
Quakers early in this century kept on their hats when at table " (Gum- 
mere). 

205. studied, ' a technical term of the theatre for having got up a part.' 
a sad ostent, a grave air, manner, mien. 



Act II. Sc. iii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 87 

Scene III. The same. A room in Shylock's Jwuse. 
Enter Jessica and Launcelot. 

v Jessica. I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so : 
Our house is hell, and thou, a merry devil, 
Didst rob it of some taste of tediousness. 
But fare thee well, there is a ducat for thee : 
And, Launcelot, soon at supper shalt thou see 
Lorenzo, who is thy new master's guest : 
Give him this letter ; do it secretly ; 
And so farewell : I would not have my father 
See me in talk with thee. 

Launcelot. Adieu ! tears exhibit my tongue. Most 
beautiful pagan, most sweet Jew ! if a Christian did not 
play the knave, and get thee, I am much deceived. But, 
adieu : these foolish drops do something drown my manly 
spirit : adieu. [Exit Launcelot. 

Jessica. Farewell, good Launcelot. 
Alack, what heinous sin is it in me 
To be ashamed to be my father's child ! 
But though I am a daughter to his blood, 
I am not to his manners. Lorenzo, 
If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife, ■ 20 

Become a Christian and thy loving wife. [Exit. 

Scene IV. The same. A street. 
Enter Gratiano, Lorenzo, Salarino, and Salanio. 

Lorenzo. Nay, we will slink away in supper-time, 
Disguise us at my lodging and return, 
All in an hour. 

Gratiano. We have not made good preparation. 

Salarino. We have not spoke us yet of torch-bearers. 

Scene iv.— 1. in, during, at (Abbott, 161). 



88 THE MERCHANT OP VENICE [Act II. Sc. iv. 

/*• 

Salanio. 'T is vile, unless it may be quaintly order'd, ^"^ 

And better in my mind not undertook. 

Lorenzo. 'T is now but four o'clock : we have two hours 
To furnish us. 

Enter Launcelot, with a letter. 

Friend Launcelot, what's the news ? 10 

Launcelot. An it shall please you to break up this, it 
shall seem to signify. 

Lorenzo. I know the hand : in faith, 't is a fair hand ; 
And whiter than the paper it writ on 
Is the fair hand that writ. 

Gratiano. Love-news, in faith. 

Launcelot. By your leave, sir. 

Lorenzo. Whither goest thou? 

Launcelot. Marry, sir, to bid my old master the Jew to 
sup to-night with my new master the Christian. 

Lorenzo. Hold here, take this : tell gentle Jessica 20 
I will not fail her ; speak it privately. 
Go. — Gentlemen, [Exit Launcelot. 

Will you prepare you for this masque to-night ? 
I am provided of a torch-bearer. 

Salarino. Ay, marry, I '11 be gone about it straight. 

Salanio. And so will I. 

Lorenzo. Meet me and Gratiano 

At Gratiano's lodging some hour hence. 

Salarino. 'T is good we do so. 

[Exeunt Salarino and Salanio. 

Gratiano. Was not that letter from fair Jessica ? 

Lorenzo. I must needs tell thee all. She hath directed 30 
How I shall take her from her father's house, 
What gold and jewels she is furnish'd with, 
What page's suit she hath in readiness. 
If e'er the Jew her father come to heaven, 

6. quaintly, gracefully, tastefully, artistically. 



Act II. Sc. v.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 89 

It will be for his gentle daughter's sake : 

And never dare misfortune cross her foot, 

Unless she do it under this excuse, 

That she is issue to a faithless Jew. 

Come, go with me ; peruse this as thou goest : 

Fair Jessica shall be my torch-bearer. [Exeunt. 40 

Scene V. The same. Before Shylock's house. 

Enter Shylock and Launcelot. 

Shyloch. Well, thou shalt see, thy eyes shall be thy 
judge, 
The difference of old Shylock and Bassanio : — 
AVhat, Jessica ! — thou shalt not gormandise, 
As thou hast done with me : — What, Jessica ! — 
And sleep and snore, and rend apparel out ; — 
Why, Jessica, I say ! 

Launcelot. Why, Jessica ! 

Shylock. Who bids thee call ? I do not bid thee call. 

Launcelot. Your worship was wont to tell me that I 
could do nothing without bidding. 
Enter Jessica. 

Jessica. Call you ? what is your will ? 10 

Shyloch. I am bid forth to supper, Jessica : 
There are my keys. But wherefore should I go ? 
I am not bid for love ; they natter me : 
But yet I '11 go in hate, to feed upon 
The prodigal Christian. Jessica, my girl, 
Look to my house. I am right loath to go : 
There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest, 
For I did dream of money-bags to-night. 

38. faithless, i.e., unbelieving. "Shylock has far more faith than 
Lorenzo, but not faith in Christianity " (Katherine Lee Bates). 

18. to-night, i.e., last night, "the phrase meaning merely 'for the 
night ' may refer to the present, the past, or the future." 



90 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE ^c^L Sc. v. 

y> 

Launcelot. I beseech you, sir, go : my young master 
doth expect your reproach. 20 

Shylock. So do I his. 

Launcelot. And they have conspired together, I will not 
say you shall see a masque ; but if you do, then it was not 
for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black-Monday 
last at six o'clock i' the morning, falling out that year on 
Ash-Wednesday was four year, in the afternoon. 

Shylock. What, are there masques ? Hear you me, 
Jessica : 
Lock up my doors ; and when you hear the drum 
And the vile squealing of the wry-neck'd fife, 30 

Clamber not you up to the casements then, 
Nor thrust your head into the public street 
To gaze on Christian fools with varnish'd faces, 
But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements : 
Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter 
My sober house. By Jacob's staff, I swear, 
I have no mind of feasting forth to-night : 
But I will go. Go you before me, sirrah ; 
Say I will come. 

Launcelot. I will go before, sir. Mistress, look out at 
window, for all this ; 41 

There will come a Christian by, 
Will be worth a Jewess' eye. [Exit. 

37. of feasting, for feasting. See Abbott, 174. 

43. worth a Jewess' eye. " A slight alteration, for the nonce, of 
the proverbial expression, Worth a Jew's eye" (Dyce); "that worth 
was the price which the persecuted Jews paid for immunity from 
mutilation and death. When our rapacious King John extorted an 
enormous sum from the Jew of Bristol by drawing his teeth, the 
threat of putting out an eye would have the like effect upon other 
Jews " (Knight). Cf. from Scott's Ivanhoe, chap, xxii, " Seest thou, 
Isaac," said Front-de-Bceuf, " the range of iron bars above the glowing 
charcoal 1 — on that warm couch shalt thou lie, stripped of thy clothes 



Act II. Sc. vi.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 91 

Shylock. What says that fool of Hagar's offspring, ha ? 

Jessica. His words were ' Farewell, mistress ' ; nothing 
else. 

Shyloch. The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder ; 
Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day 
More than the wild-cat : drones hive not with me ; 
Therefore I part with him, and part with him 
To one that I would have him help to waste 50 

His borrow'd purse. Well, Jessica, go in : 
Perhaps I will return immediately : 
Do as I bid you ; shut doors after you : 
Fast bind, fast find ; 
A proverb never stale in thrifty mind. [Exit. 

Jessica. Farewell ; and if my fortune be not crost, 
I have a father, you a daughter, lost. [Exit. 

Sceke YI. The same. 

Enter Gkatiano and Salakiko, masqued. 

Gratiano. This is the pent-house under which Lorenzo 
Desired us to make stand. 

Salarino. His hour is almost past. 

Gratiano. And it is marvel he out-dwells his hour, 
For lovers ever run before the clock. 

Salarino. 0, ten times faster Venus' pigeons fly 

46. patch, 'a name given to the professional jester (probably from his 
patched or parti-coloured coat), and afterwards used as a term of con- 
tempt' (Rolfe). 

Scene vi.— 5. Venus' pigeons. The chariot of Venus was drawn by- 
doves. 

as if thou wert to rest on a bed of down. One of these slaves shall 
maintain the fire beneath thee, while the other shall anoint thy 
wretched limbs with oil, lest the roast should burn. — Now, choose 
betwixt such a scorching bed and the payment of a thousand pounds 
of silver ; for, by the head of my father, thou hast no other option. 
"... Strip him, slaves, and chain him down upon the bars." 



92 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Sc. vi. 

To seal love's bonds new-made, than they are wont 
To keep obliged faith unforfeited ! 

Gratiano. That ever holds : who riseth from a feast 
With that keen appetite that he sits down ? 
Where is the horse that doth untread again 10 

His tedious measures with the unbated fire 
That he did pace them first ? All things that are, 
Are with more spirit chased than enjoy'd. 
How like a younker or a prodigal 
The scarfed bark puts from her native bay, 
Hugg'd and embraced by the strumpet wind ! 
How like the prodigal doth she return, 
With over-weather'd ribs and ragged sails, 
Lean, rent and beggar'd by the strumpet wind ! 

Salarino. Here comes Lorenzo : more of this hereafter. 20 
Enter Lokenzo. 

Lorenzo. Sweet friends, your patience for my long abode ; 
Not I, but my affairs, have made you wait : 
When you shall please to play the thieves for wives, 
I'll watch as long for you then. Approach ; 
Here dwells my father Jew. Ho ! who's within ? 
Enter Jessica, above, in loy^s clothes. 

Jessica. Who are you ? Tell me, for more certainty, 
Albeit I'll swear that I do know your tongue. 

Lorenzo. Lorenzo, and thy love. 

Jessica. Lorenzo, certain, and my love indeed, 
For who love I so much ? And now who knows 30 

But you, Lorenzo, whether I am yours ? 

Lorenzo. Heaven and thy thoughts are witness that thou 
art. 

Jessica. Here, catch this casket ; it is worth the pains. 
I am glad 'tis night, you do not look on me, 

7. obliged, bound by contract. 
15. scarfed, ' decked with flags and streamers.' 
21. abode, abiding, delay. 



Act II. Sc. vi.] THE MERCHANT OP VENICE 93 

For I am much ashamed of my exchange : 
But love is blind and lovers cannot see 
The pretty follies that themselves commit ; 
For if they could, Cupid himself would blush 
To see me thus transformed to a boy. 

Lorenzo. Descend, for you must be my torch-bearer. 40 

Jessica. What, must I hold a candle to my shames? 
They in themselves, good sooth, are too too light. 
Why, 'tis an office of discovery, love ; 
And I should be obscured. 

Lorenzo. So are you, sweet, 

Even in the lovely garnish of a boy. 
But come at once ; 

For the close night doth play the runaway, 
And we are stay'd for at Bassanio's feast. 

Jessica. I will make fast the doors, and gild myself 
With some more ducats, and be with you straight. 

[Exit above, go 

Gratiano. Now, by my hood, a Gentile and no Jew. 

Lorenzo. Beshrew me but I love her heartily ; 
For she is wise, if I can judge of her, 
And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true, 
And true she is, as she hath proved herself, 
And therefore, like herself, wise, fair and true, 
Shall she be placed in my constant soul. 
Enter Jessica, Moiv. 
What, art thou come ? On, gentlemen ; away ! 
Our masquing mates by this time for us stay. 

[Exit tvith Jessica and Salarino. 

43. an office of discovery, etc., i. e., "the duty you impose upon me is 
one of discovering myself (and my disgrace) instead of disguising myself, 
as I ought to do." ' A torch-bearer's office reveals the face, and mine 
ought to be hidden ' (Abbott, 323). 

47. close, secret, — i. e., the secreting or concealing night is slipping away. 

52. " But is not adversative, but means 'if not,' after 'beshrew me,' 
&c." (Abbott, 126). 



94 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Sc. vii. 

Enter Antonio. 

Antonio. Who's there ? eo 

Gratiano. Signior Antonio ! 

Antonio. Fie, fie, Gratiano ! where are all the rest ? 
'Tis nine o'clock : our friends all stay for you. 
No masque to-night : the wind is come about ; 
Bassanio presently will go aboard : 
I have sent twenty out to seek for you. 

Gratiano. I am glad on't : I desire no more delight 
Than to be under sail and gone to-night. [Exeunt. 

Scene VII. Belmont. A room in Portia's house. 

Flourish of cornets. Enter Portia, with the Prince of 
Morocco, and their trains. 

Portia. Go draw aside the curtains and discover 
The several caskets to this noble prince. 
Now make your choice. 

Morocco. The first, of gold, who this inscription bears, 
' Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire ' ; 
The second, silver, which this promise carries, 
i Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves ' ; 
This third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt, 
' Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.' 
How shall I know if I do choose the right ? 10 

Portia. The one of them contains my picture, prince : 
If you choose that, then I am yours withal. 

Morocco. Some god direct my judgement ! Let me see ; 
I will survey the inscriptions back again. 
What says this leaden casket ? 

' Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.' 
Must give : for what ? for lead ? hazard for lead ? 
This casket threatens. Men that hazard all 

12. yours withal, yours together with it. 



Act II. Sc. vii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 95 

Do it in hope of fair advantages : 

A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross ; 20 

I'll then nor give nor hazard aught for lead. 

What says the silver with her virgin hue ? 

4 Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.' 

As much as he deserves ! Pause there, Morocco, 

And weigh thy value with an even hand : 

If thou be'st rated by thy estimation, 

Thou dos't deserve enough ; and yet enough 

May not extend so far as to the lady : 

And yet to be af eard of my deserving 

Were but a weak disabling of myself. 30 

As much as I deserve ! Why, that's the lady : 

I do in birth deserve her, and in fortunes, 

In graces and in qualities of breeding ; 

But more than these, in love I do deserve. 

What if I stray'd no further, but chose here ? 

Let's see once more this saying graved in gold ; 

6 Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.' 

Why, that's the lady ; all the world desires her ; 

From the four corners of the earth they come, 

To kiss this shrine, this mortal-breathing saint : 40 

The Hyrcanian deserts and the vasty wilds 

Of wide Arabia are as thoroughfares now 

For princes to come view fair Portia : 

The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head 

Spits in the face of heaven, is no bar 

To stop the foreign spirits, but they come, 

As o'er a brook, to see fair Portia. 

One of these three contains her heavenly picture. 

Is't like that lead contains her ? 'Twere damnation 

20. a golden mind, etc., i.e., a noble mind does not deign to concern 
itself with dross such as this base lead. 

26. thy estimation, thy reputation. 

27. deserve enough, deserve fairly or largely. 
30. disabling, disparaging. 



96 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Sc. vii. 

To think so base a thought : it were too gross so 

To rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave. 
Or shall I think in silver she's immured, 
Being ten times undervalued to tried gold ? 
sinful thought ! Never so rich a gem 
Was set in worse than gold. They have in England 
A coin that bears the figure of an angel 
Stamped in gold, but that's insculp'd upon ; 
But here an angel in a golden bed 
Lies all within. Deliver me the key : 
Here do I choose, and thrive I as I may ! eo 

Portia. There, take it, prince ; and if my form lie there, 
Then I am yours. [He unlocks the golden casket. 

Morocco. hell ! what have we here ? 

A carrion Death, within whose empty eye 
There is a written scroll ! I'll read the writing. 
[ Reads] All that glisters is not gold ; 

Often have you heard that told : 

Many a man his life hath sold 

But my outside to behold : 

Gilded tombs do worms infold. 

Had you been as wise as bold, 70 

Young in limbs, in judgement old, 

Your answer had not been inscroll'd : 

Fare you well ; your suit is cold. 
Cold, indeed ; and labour lost : 
Then, farewell, heat, and welcome, frost ! 
Portia, adieu. I have too grieved a heart 
To take a tedious leave : thus losers part. 

[Exit with his train. Flourish of cornets. 

50. too gross To rib her cerecloth, etc., i. e., lead would be too coarse 
or common to enclose her shroud in the darkness of the tomb. 
53. undervalued to, i. e., in comparison with. See Abbott, 187. 
71. " (As) young in limbs, (.so) in judgment old" (Abbott, 275). 
77. thus losers part, i. e., depart. 



Act II. Sc. viii.] THE MERCHANT OP VENICE 97 

Portia. A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains, go. 
Let all of his complexion choose me so. [Exeunt. 

X 
Scene VIII. Venice. A street. 

Enter Salakino and Salanio. 

Salarino. Why, man, I saw Bassanio under sail : 
With him is Gratiano gone along ; 
And in their ship I am sure Lorenzo is not. 

Salanio. The villain Jew with outcries raised the 
duke, 
Who went with him to search Bassanio's ship. 

Salarino. He came too late, the ship was under sail : 
But there the duke was given to understand 
That in a gondola were seen together 
Lorenzo and his amorous Jessica : 

Besides, Antonio certified the duke 10 

They were not with Bassanio in his ship. 

Salanio. I never heard a passion so confused, 
So strange, outrageous, and so variable, 
As the dog Jew did utter in the streets : 
' My daughter ! my ducats ! my daughter ! 
Fled with a Christian ! my Christian ducats ! 
Justice ! the law ! my ducats, and my daughter ! 
A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats, 
Of double ducats, stolen from me by my daughter ! 
And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones, 20 
Stolen by my daughter ! Justice ! find the girl ; 
She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats.' 

Salarino. Why, all the boys in Venice follow him, 
Crying, his stones, his daughter, and his ducats. 

Salanio. Let good Antonio look he keep his day, 
Or he shall pay for this. 

Salarino. Marry, well remember'd. 

12. passion, ' passionate outcry ; the cause for the effect ' (Hudson). 

7 



98 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Sc. viii. 

I reason'd with a Frenchman yesterday, 

Who told me, in the narrow seas that part 

The French and English, there miscarried 

A vessel of our country richly fraught : 30 

I thought upon Antonio when he told me ; 

And wish'd in silence that it were not his. 

Salanio. You were best to tell Antonio what you hear ; 
Yet do not suddenly, for it may grieve him. 

Salarino. A kinder gentleman treads not the earth. 
I saw Bassanio and Antonio part : 
Bassanio told him he would make some speed 
Of his return : he answer'd ' Do not so ; 
Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio, 
But stay the very riping of the time ; 40 

And for the Jew's bond which he hath of me, 
Let it not enter in your mind of love : 
Be merry, and employ your chiefest thoughts 
To courtship and such fair ostents of love 
As shall conveniently become you there ' : 
And even there, his eye being big with tears, 
Turning his face, he put his hand behind him, 
And with affection wondrous sensible 
He wrung Bassanio's hand ; and so they parted. 

Salanio. I think he only loves the world for him. 50 
I pray thee, let us go and find him out 
And quicken his embraced heaviness 
With some delight or other. 

Salarino. Do we so. [Exeimt. 

27. reason'd, talked, conversed. 

30. fraught, freighted. 

42. yonr mind of love, your loving mind. 

44. ostents of love, manifestations, indications, displays of love. 

45. conveniently, suitably, properly. 
48. sensible, sensitive. 

52. quioken his embraced heaviness, ' enliven the sadness which he 
clings to or cherishes.' 



Act II. Sc. ix.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 99 

Scene IX. Belmont. A room in Portia's house. 
Enter Nerissa with a Servitor. 

Nerissa. Quick, quick, I pray thee ; draw the curtain 
straight : 
The Prince of Arragon hath ta'en his oath, 
And comes to his election presently. 

Flourish of cornets. Enter the Prince of Arragon, 
Portia, and their trains. 

Portia. Behold, there stand the caskets, noble prince : 
If you choose that wherein I am contain 'd, 
Straight shall our nuptial rites be solemnized : 
But if you fail, without more speech, my lord, 
You must be gone from hence immediately. 

Arragon. I am enjoin'd by oath to observe three things : 
First, never to unfold to any one 10 

"Which casket 'twas I chose ; next, if I fail 
Of the right casket, never in my life 
To woo a maid in way of marriage : 
Lastly, 

If I do fail in fortune of my choice, 
Immediately to leave you and be gone. 

Portia. To these injunctions every one doth swear 
That comes to hazard for my worthless self. 

Arragon. And so have I address'd me. Fortune now 
To my heart's hope ! Gold ; silver ; and base lead. 20 

1 Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.' 
You shall look fairer, ere I give or hazard. 
What says the golden chest ? ha ! let me see : 
1 Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.' 
What many men desire ! that * many ' may be meant 
By the fool multitude, that choose by show, 
Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach ; 

19. address'd me, prepared myself. 
25. meant By, i. e., meant for. 

LofC. 



100 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Sc. ix. 

Which pries not to the interior, but, like the martlet, 

Builds in the weather on the outward wall, 

Even in the force and road of casualty. 30 

I will not choose what many men desire, 

Because I will not jump with common spirits 

And rank me with the barbarous multitudes. 

Why, then to thee, thou silver treasure-house ; 

Tell me once more what title thou dost bear : 

1 Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves ' : 

And well said too ; for who shall go about 

To cozen fortune and be honourable 

Without the stamp of merit ? Let none presume 

To wear an undeserved dignity. 40 

0, that estates, degrees and offices 

Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour 

Were purchased by the merit of the wearer ! 

How many then should cover that stand bare ! 

How many be commanded that command ! 

How much low peasantry would then be glean 'd 

From the true seed of honour ! and how much honour 

Pick'd from the chaff and ruin of the times 

To be new-varnish'd ! Well, but to my choice : 

30. force (power) and road of, — "perhaps equivalent to in vi et via, 
exposed to the attack of " (Allen, quoted by Furness). 

32. jump with, agree with. 

42. dear honour, bright, unsullied honour. 

44. cover, etc., i. e., wear their hats as superiors, not take them off as 
inferiors. 

46. low peasantry, etc., " How much meanness would be found among 
the great, and how much greatness among the mean" (Johnson). 

41-49. Cf. from Tennyson's Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, 
Plowmen, Shepherds, have 1 found, and more than once, and still could find, 
Sons of God, and kings of men in utter nobleness of mind, 
Truthful, trustful, looking upward to the practised hustings-liar ; 
So the Higher wields the Lower, while the Lower is the Higher. 
Here and there a cotter's babe is royal-born by right divine ; 
Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine. 



Act II. Sc. ix.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 101 

* Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.' so 
I will assume desert. Give me a key for this, 

And instantly unlock my fortunes here. 

[He opens the silver casket. 
Portia. Too long a pause for that which you find 

there. 
Arragon. What's here? the portrait of a blinking idiot, 
Presenting me a schedule ! I will read it. 
How much unlike art thou to Portia ! 
How much unlike my hopes and my deservings ! 

* Who chooseth me shall have as much as he deserves.' 
Did I deserve no more than a fool's head ? 

Is that my prize ? are my deserts no better ? 60 

Portia. To offend, and judge, are distinct offices 
And of opposed natures. 
Arragon. What is here ? 

[Reads] The fire seven times tried this : 

Seven times tried that judgement is, 
That did never choose amiss. 

61. To offend, and judge, etc., "That is, an offender cannot be the 
judge of his own case " (Rolfe). 

"There is surely an obscurity in this reply. She seems to consider 
him as having offended by the injudicious choice he had made ; and he 
ought not, therefore, to assume the character of a judge in deciding upon 
his own merits, which, indirectly, he may be said to do by this indignant 
reply" (Eccles, quoted by Furness). 

"Portia probably intends to imply that, by the terms of her father's 
will, she has unintentionally been the means of offending Arragon, and 
that he must not ask her to be a judge of his deserts ; his fate was the 
result of no judgment of hers " (Underwood). 

53. " It is to me [an aside], beyond a peradventure. As addressed 
to Arragon these words have the sound of twitting him, which is not, 
to me, quite in character. To be sure, it may be said that Portia is 
so delighted at his failure that she cannot restrain her merriment, 
but the open expression of it, even to a deliberate fool, is not exactly 
in harmony with that sympathetic tenderness of hers which was like 
the gentle rain from heaven " (Furness). 



102 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Sc. ix. 

Some there be that shadows kiss ; 
Such have but a shadow's bliss : 
There be fools alive, I wis, 
Silver'd o'er ; and so was this. 
Take what wife you will to bed, w 

I will ever be your head : 
So be gone : you are sped. 
Still more fool I shall appear 
By the time I linger here : 
With one fool's head I came to woo, 
But I go away with two. 
Sweet, adieu. I '11 keep my oath, 
Patiently to bear my wroth. 

[Exeunt Arkagon and train, 
Portia. Thus hath the candle singed the moth. 
0, these deliberate fools ! when they do choose, so 

They have the wisdom by their wit to lose. 
Nerissa. The ancient saying is no heresy, 
Hanging and wiving goes by destiny. 
Portia. Come, draw the curtain, Rerissa. 

Enter a Servant. 
Servant. Where is my lady ? 

Portia. Here : what would my lord ? 

Servant. Madam, there is alighted at your gate 
A young Venetian, one that comes before 
To signify the approaching of his lord ; 
From whom he bringeth sensible regreets, 
To wit, besides commends and courteous breath, 90 

Gifts of rich value. Yet I have not seen 
So likely an ambassador of love : 

85. what would my lord, a sportive rejoinder to 'my lady.' "She 
is in a happy mood, and disposed to joke ? " (Sprague). 

89. sensible regreets, substantial greetings. 

92. likely, 'promising' (Rolfe), ' good-looking ?' (Furness), 'pleasing, 
one who fits his office' (Gummere). 



Act II. Sc. be.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 103 

A day in April never came so sweet, 

To show how costly summer was at hand, 

As this fore-spurrer comes before his lord. 

Portia. No more, I pray thee : I am half afeard 
Thou wilt say anon he is some kin to thee, 
Thou spend'st such high-day wit in praising him. 
Come, come, Nerissa ; for I long to see 
Quick Cupid's post that comes so mannerly. 100 

Nerissa. Bassanio, lord Love, if thy will it be ! 

[Exeunt. 

98. high-day wit, holiday wit, ' elegant and choice terms.' 

100. post, postman, courier. 

101. Bassanio, lord Love, etc. L e., may it prove to be Bassanio, lord 
Love, if it be thy will. 



ACT IIL 

Scene I. Venice. A street. 
Enter Salanio and Salarino. 

Salanio. Now, what news on the Eialto ? 

Salarino. Why, yet it lives there unchecked that Anto- 
nio hath a ship of rich lading wrecked on the narrow 
seas ; the Goodwins, I think they call the place ; a very 
dangerous flat and fatal, where the carcases of many a 
tall ship lie buried, as they say, if my gossip Eeport be an 
honest woman of her word. 

Salanio. I would she were as lying a gossip in that as 
ever knapped ginger or made her neighbours believe 
she wept for the death of a third husband. But it is 
true, without any slips of prolixity or crossing the plain 
highway of talk, that the good Antonio, the honest Anto- 
nio, that I had a title good enough to keep his 

name company ! — 

Salarino. Come, the full stop. 

Salanio. Ha ! what sayest thou ? Why, the end is, he 
hath lost a ship. 19 

Salarino. I would it might prove the end of his losses. 

Salanio. Let me say 'amen' betimes, lest the devil cross 
my prayer, for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew. 

Enter Shylock. 
How, now, Shylock ! what news among the merchants? 

Sliylock. You knew, none so well, none so well as you, 
of my daughter's flight. 

10. knapped ginger, ' nibbled ginger ' (Furness). 
104 



Act III. Sc. L] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 105 

Salarino. That's certain ; I, for my part, knew the 
tailor that made the wings she flew withal. 30 

Salanio. And Shylock, for his own part, knew the bird 
was fledged ; and then it is the complexion of them all to 
leave the dam. 

Shylock. She is damned for it. 

Salarino. That's certain, if the devil may be her judge. 

Shylock. My own flesh and blood to rebel ! 

Salanio. Out upon it, old carrion ! rebels it at these 
years ? 

Shylock. I say, my daughter is my flesh and blood. 40 

Salarino. There is more difference between thy flesh 
and hers than between jet and ivory ; more between your 
bloods than there is between red wine and rhenish. But 
tell us, do you hear whether Antonio have had any loss at 
sea or no ? 

Shylock. There I have another bad match : a bankrupt, 
a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the Eialto ; 
a beggar, that was used to come so smug upon the mart ; 
let him look to his bond : he was wont to call me usurer ; 
let him look to his bond : he was wont to lend money for 
a Christian courtesy ; let him look to his bond. 

Salarino. Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not 
take his flesh : what's that good for ? 54 

Shylock. To bait fish withal : if it will feed nothing 
else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and 
hindered me half a million ; laughed at my losses, mocked 
at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, 
cooled my friends, heated mine enemies ; and what's his 
reason ? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes ? hath not a 
Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, pas- 

32. complexion, nature, natural disposition. 

43. red wine and rhenish. Ehenish (Rhine) wines are called white 
wines. 

46. another had match, another bad bargain. 
8 



106 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. Sc. i. 

sions ? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weap- 
ons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same 
means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and sum- 
mer, as a Christian is ? If you prick us, do we not bleed ? 
if you tickle us, do we not laugh ? if you poison us, do we 
not die ? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge ? If 
we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. 
If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility ? Ee- 
venge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his 
sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. 
The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go 
hard but I will better the instruction. ?c 

Enter a Servant. 

Servant. Gentlemen, my master Antonio is at his house 
and desires to speak with you both. 

Salarino. We have been up and down to seek him. 
Enter Tubal. 

Salanio. Here comes another of the tribe : a third can- 
not be matched, unless the devil himself turn Jew. 

[Exeunt Salakio, Salarino and Servant. 

Shyloch. How now, Tubal ! what news from Genoa ? 
hast thou found my daughter ? 

Tubal. I often came where I did hear of her, but can- 
not find her. 86 

72. humility, kindness, benevolence, i. e., 'what kind of humility 
(kindness, benevolence, humanity) does he show?' 

76. better the instruction. "It is none the less astounding how 
much right in wrong, how much humanity in unhumanity, Shake- 
speare has succeeded in imparting to Shylock. The spectator sees 
clearly that, with the treatment he has suffered, he could not but be- 
come what he is. . . . With his calm humanity, Shakespeare makes Shy- 
lock's hardness and cruelty result at once from his passionate nature 
and his abnormal position ; so that, in spite of everything, he has come 
to appear in the eyes of later times as a sort of tragic symbol of the 
degradation and vengefulness of an oppressed race." — Brandes, p. 166. 



Act III. Sc. i.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 107 

Shylock. Why, there, there, there, there ! a diamond gone, 
cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfort ! The curse 
never fell upon our nation till now ; I never felt it till now : 
two thousand ducats in that ; and other precious, precious 
jewels. I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and 
the jewels in her ear ! would she were hearsed at my foot, 
and the ducats in her coffin ! No news of them ? Why, 
so : and I know not what's spent in the search : why, thou 
loss upon loss ! the thief gone with so much, and so much 
to find the thief ; and no satisfaction, no revenge : nor 
no ill luck stirring but what lights on my shoulders ; no 
sighs but of my breathing; no tears but of my shed- 
ding. 101 

Tubal. Yes, other men have ill luck too : Antonio, as 
I heard in Genoa, — 

Shylock. What, what, what ? ill luck, ill luck ? 

Tubal. Hath an argosy cast away, coming from Tripolis. 

Shylock. I thank God, I thank God. Is't true, is't 
true? 

Tubal. I spoke with some of the sailors that escaped 
the wreck. no 

Shylock. I thank thee, good Tubal : good news, good 
news ! ha, ha ! where ? in Genoa ? 

Tubal. Your daughter spent in Genoa, as I heard, in 
one night fourscore ducats. 

Shylock. Thou stickest a dagger in me : I shall never 
see my gold again : fourscore ducats at a sitting ! four- 
score ducats ! 

Tubal. There came divers of Antonio's creditors in my 
company to Venice, that swear he cannot choose but 
break. 120 

Shylock. I am very glad of it : I'll plague him ; I'll 
torture him : I am glad of it. 

Tubal. One of them showed me a ring that he had of 
your daughter for a monkey. 



108 THE MERCHANT OP VENICE [Act III. Sc. ii. 

Shyloclc. Out upon her ! Thou torturest me, Tubal : 
it was my turquoise : I had it of Leah when I was a 
bachelor : I would not have given it for a wilderness of 
monkeys. 

Tubal. But Antonio is certainly undone. 129 

Shyloclc. Nay, that's true, that's very true. Go, Tubal, fee 
me an officer ; bespeak him a fortnight before. I will have 
the heart of him, if he forfeit ; for, were he out of Venice, 
I can make what merchandise I will. Go, go, Tubal, and 
meet me at our synagogue ; go, good Tubal ; at our syna- 
gogue, Tubal. [Exeunt. 

Scene II. Belmont. A room in Portia's house. 

Enter Bassanio, Portia, Gratiako, Nerissa, and 
Attendants. 

Portia. I pray you, tarry : pause a day or two 
Before you hazard ; for, in choosing wrong, 
I lose your company : therefore forbear awhile. 
There's something tells me, but it is not love, 
I would not lose you ; and you know yourself, 
Hate counsels not in such a quality. 
But lest you should not understand me well, — 
And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought, — 
I would detain you here some month or two 
Before you venture for me. I could teach you 10 

How to choose right, but I am then forsworn ; 
So will I never be : so may you miss me ; 
But if you do, you'll make me wish a sin, 

6. such a quality, such a manner. 

7-8. "And yet, since a maiden may only think and not speak her 
thoughts, you will not understand me, however long you stay " (Claren- 
don) ; ' Portia loved Bassanio, hut felt restrained from telling him so by 
maidenly modesty and social conventionality' (Shahespeariana, Dec. 1886). 
See Furness. 

11. forsworn, perjured. 



Act III. Sc. ii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 109 

That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes, 

They have o'erlook'd me and divided me ; 

One half of me is yours, the other half yours, 

Mine own, I would say ; but if mine, then yours, 

And so all yours. 0, these naughty times 

Put bars between the owners and their rights ! 

And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so, 20 

Let fortune go to hell for it, not I. 

I speak too long ; but 't is to peize the time, 

To eke it and to draw it out in length, 

To stay you from election. 

Bassanio. Let me choose ; 

For as I am, I live upon the rack. 

Portia. Upon the rack, Bassanio ! then confess 
What treason there is mingled with your love. 

Bassanio. None but that ugly treason of mistrust, 
Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love : 
There may as well be amity and life 30 

'Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love. 

Portia. Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack, 
Where men enforced do speak anything. 

Bassanio. Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth. 

Portia. Well then, confess and live. 

Bassanio. < Confess ' and ' love ' 

14. Beshrew your eyes, — an imprecation, but here spoken playfully 
or perhaps tenderly. 

15. o'erlook'd me, bewitched me, cast a spell upon me, — a term in 
witchcraft. , 

20. Prove it so, etc., i. e., "If it should prove in the end that I who 
give myself to you am not to be yours, owing to your choosing wrong, let 
fortune pay the penalty for the mishap, not me on whom no blame can 
justly be laid " (Deighton). 

22. peize, retard, prolong. 

26. then oonfess, — ' alluding to the devilish use of the rack to extort 
confessions' (Sprague). 

28. None but, etc., i. e., " no treason at all, unless that cruel, hateful, 
feeling of doubt which disturbs my peace of mind, may be called treason " 
(Deighton). 



110 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. Sc. ii. 

Had been the very sum of my confession • 
happy torment, when my torturer 
Doth teach me answers for deliverance ! 
But let me to my fortune and the caskets. 

Portia. Away, then ! I am lock'd in one of them : 40 
If you do love me, you will find me out. 
Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof. 
Let music sound while he doth make his choice ; 
Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, 
Fading in music : that the comparison 
May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream 
And watery death-bed for him. He may win ; 
And what is music then ? Then music is 
Even as the flourish when true subjects bow 
To a new-crowned monarch : such it is 50 

As are those dulcet sounds in break of day 
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear 
And summon him to marriage. Xow he goes, 
With no less presence, but with much more love, 
Than young Alcides, when he did redeem 
The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy 
To the sea-monster : I stand for sacrifice ; 
The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives, 
With bleared visages, come forth to view 
The issue of the exploit. Go, Hercules ! eo 

44. swan-like end,— an allusion to the old and long accepted belief 
("from Plato to Luther," says Douce) that the swan never sang until 
just before its death, when it breathed out its life in one beautiful strain 
of music— 'a favourite notion with Shakespeare' (Clarendon). "The 
closing part of the allusion supposes the bird to sing her life away while 
floating passively on the water " (Hudson). 

52. bridegroom's ear,— " An allusion to the custom of playing music 
under the windows at the bridegroom's bedroom on the morning of his 
marriage" (Halliwell). 

54. presence, dignity of bearing, much more love,— because Hercules 
(Alcides) rescued the maiden from the sea-monster, not for love, but for a 
reward promised. 

59. bleared, i. e., dimmed with tears. 



Act III. Sc. ii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 111 

Live thou, I live : with much more dismay 

I view the fight than thou that makest the fray. 

Music, whilst Bassanio comments on the caskets to 
himself. 

Song. 

Tell me where is fancy bred, 
Or in the heart or in the head ? 
How begot, how nourished ? 

Eeply, reply. 
It is engender'd in the eyes, 
With gazing fed ; and fancy dies 
In the cradle where it lies. 

Let us all ring fancy's knell : ?o 

I'll begin it, — Ding, dong, bell. 

All. Ding, dong, bell. 

Bassanio. So may the outward shows be least themselves : 
The world is still deceived with ornament. 
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt 
But, being season'd with a gracious voice, 
Obscures the show of evil ? In religion, 
What damned error, but some sober brow 
Will bless it and approve it with a text, 
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament ? so 

There is no vice so simple but assumes 
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts : 
How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false 
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins 
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars, 
Who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk ; 
And these assume but valour's excrement 

76. season'd, — carrying on the metaphor in ' tainted and corrupt.' 

86. livers white as milk. Cf. ii. 1. 7. 

87. valour's exorement, i. e., the external sign of valour— the beards 
of Hercules and of frowning Mars. 



112 THE MERCHANT OP VENICE [Act III. Sc. ii. 

To render them redoubted ! Look on beauty, 

And you shall see 't is purchased by the weight ; 

Which therein works a miracle in nature, 90 

Making them lightest that wear most of it : 

So are those crisped snaky golden locks 

Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, 

Upon supposed fairness, often known 

To be the dowry of a second head, 

The skull that bred them in the sepulchre. 

Thus ornament is but the guiled shore 

To a most dangerous sea ; the beauteous scarf 

Veiling an Indian beauty ; in a word, 

The seeming truth which cunning times put on 100 

To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold, 

Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee ; 

Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge 

'Tween man and man : but thou, thou meagre lead, 

Which rather threatenest than dost promise aught, 

Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence ; 

And here choose I : joy be the consequence ! 

Portia. [Aside] How all the other passions fleet to air, 
As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair, 
And shuddering fear, and green-eyed jealousy ! no 

love, be moderate ; allay thy ecstasy ; 

In measure rein thy joy ; scant this excess. 

1 feel too much thy blessing : make it less, 
For fear I surfeit. 

Bassanio. What find I here ? [Opening the leaden casket. 

88. redoubted, redoubtable, feared, dreaded. 

91. Making" them lightest, i. e., vainest (with a play upon the two 
meanings of the word light, the miracle in nature being that what is pur- 
chased by the weight should make lightest those that wear most of it). 

97. guiled, beguiling, treacherous. 

99. an Indian beauty. " ' Indian ' is used adjectively, in the sense of 
wild, savage, hideous, — just as we, at the present day, might say a 
' Hottentot beauty ' " (Brae). For various interpretations and emenda- 
tions, see Furness. 



Act III. Sc. ii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 113 

Fair Portia's counterfeit ! What demi-god 

Hath come so near creation ? Move these eyes ? 

Or whether, riding on the balls of mine, 

Seem they in motion ? Here are sever'd lips, 

Parted with sugar breath : so sweet a bar 

Should sunder such sweet friends. Here in her hairs 120 

The painter plays the spider and hath woven 

A golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men 

Faster than gnats in cobwebs : but her eyes, — 

How could he see to do them ? having made one, 

Methinks it should have power to steal both his 

And leave itself unfurnished. Yet look, how far 

The substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow 

In underprizing it, so far this shadow 

Doth limp behind the substance. Here's the scroll, 130 

The continent and summary of my fortune. 

[Reads] You that choose not by the view, 

Chance as fair and choose as true ! 

Since this fortune falls to you, 

Be content and seek no new. 

If you be well pleased with this 

And hold your fortune for your bliss, 

Turn you where your lady is 

And claim her with a loving kiss. 
A gentle scroll. Fair lady, by your leave ; 140 

I come by note, to give and to receive. 
Like one of two contending in a prize, 
That thinks he hath done well in people's eyes, 
Hearing applause and universal shout, 
Giddy in spirit, still gazing in a doubt 
Whether those peals of praise be his or no ; 
So, thrice-fair lady, stand I, even so ; 

127. nnfurnish'd,— with the other eye, that is. 
131. continent, i. e., that which holds. 
141. by note, by written warrant. 



114 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. Sc. ii. 

As doubtful whether what I see be true, 
Until confirm'd, sign'd, ratified by you. 

Portia. You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, no 
Such as I am : though for myself alone 
I would not be ambitious in my wish, 
To wish myself much better ; yet, for you 
I would be trebled twenty times myself ; 
A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times 
More rich ; 

That only to stand high in your account, 
I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, 
Exceed account ; but the full sum of me 
Is sum of something, which, to term in gross, 160 

Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractised ; 
Happy in this, she is not yet so old 
But she may learn ; happier then in this, 
She is not bred so dull but she can learn ; 
Happiest of all in that her gentle spirit 
Commits itself to yours to be directed, 

158. livings, possessions, -wealth. 

161. unpractised, not having been taught by practice, inexperienced, 
not skilled. Cf. 'And skilless as unpractised infancy,' Troilus and Cres- 
sida, i. 1. 12. 

160. sum of something. The reading of the Qq. The Ff. read, 
sum of nothing. "Whether we read 'something' or 'nothing,' I 
think a dash should precede it. Then the choice of the word will de- 
pend on the light in which we here regard Portia. If she is speaking 
with deliberation and choosing her words, she probably said ' sum of 
—something,' which clearly and rationally any sum whatever must 
imply. Nor does the expression lack a certain archness in keeping 
with the occasion. But if, on the other hand, we see Portia, brim- 
ming over with joy, and in wild, careless, exuberant exaggeration, 
wishing herself twenty times trebled, and a thousand fairer, and ten 
thousand times richer, and in virtues, beauties, livings, friends 
beyond all calculation, then, I think, we shall know of a surety that 
in such a mood Portia would exclaim that the full sum of her was the 
' sum of — nothing ' " (Furness). 



Act III. Sc. ii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 115 

As from her lord, her governor, her king. 

Myself and what is mine to you and yours 

Is now converted : but now I was the lord 

Of this fair mansion, master of my servants, 170 

Queen o'er myself ; and even now, but now, 

This house, these servants and this same myself 

Are yours, my lord : I give them with this ring ; 

Which when you part from, lose, or give away, 

Let it presage the ruin of your love .<? . 

And be my vantage to exclaim on you. 

Bassanio. Madam, you have bereft me of all words, 
Only my blood speaks to you in my veins ; 
And there is such confusion in my powers, 
As, after some oration fairly spoke iso 

By a beloved prince, there doth appear 
Among the buzzing pleased multitude ; 
Where every something, being blent together, 
Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy, 
Express'd and not express'd. But when this ring 
Parts from this finger, then parts life from hence : 
0, then be bold to say Bassanio's dead ! 

Nerissa. My lord and lady, it is now our time, 
That have stood by and seen our wishes prosper, 
To cry, good joy : good joy, my lord and lady ! 100 

Gratiano. My lord Bassanio and my gentle lady, 
I wish you all the joy that you can wish ; 
For I am sure you can wish none from me : 

178. Only my blood, i. e., 'his blood alone, in bis bappy blushes' 
(Furness). 

192. that you can wish, i. e., that you can wish for yourselves. 

193. can wish none from me, i. e., can wish none given by me ; or 
possibly, can wish none taken from me. See Furness, and Abbott, 158. 

172. this same myself Are yours, my lord. "It is not Juliet's pas- 
sionate self-abandonment, but the perfect surrender in tenderness of 
the wise and delicate woman." — Brandes, p. 161. 



116 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. Sc ii. 

And when your honours mean to solemnize 
The bargain of your faith, I do beseech you, 
Even at that time I may be married too. 

Bassanio. With all my heart, so thou canst get a wife. 

Gratiano. I thank your lordship, you have got me one. 
My eyes, my lord, can look as swift as yours : 
You saw the mistress, I beheld the maid ; 200 

You loved, I loved ; for intermission 
No more pertains to me, my lord, than you. 
Your fortune stood upon the casket there, 
And so did mine too, as the matter falls ; 
For wooing here until I sweat again, 
And swearing till my very roof was dry 
With oaths of love, at last, if promised last, 
I got a promise of this fair one here 
To have her love, provided that your fortune 
Achieved her mistress. 

Portia. Is this true, Nerissa ? 

Nerissa. Madam, it is, so you stand pleased withal. 

Bassanio. And do you, Gratiano, mean good faith ? 

Gratiano. Yes, faith, my lord. 

Bassanio. Our feast shall be much honour'd in your 
marriage. 
But who comes here ? Lorenzo and his infidel ? 221 

What, and my old Venetian friend Salanio ? 

Enter Lorenzo, Jessica, and Salanio, a Messenger 
from Venice. 

Bassanio. Lorenzo and Salanio, welcome hither ; 
If that the youth of my new interest here 
Have power to bid you welcome. By your leave, 
I bid my very friends and countrymen, 
Sweet Portia, welcome. 

201. for intermission, etc., i. e., " for delay in such matters is no more 
characteristic of me than of you." 
210. Achieved, secured, obtained. 



Act III. Sc. ii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 117 

Portia. So do I, my lord : 

They are entirely welcome. 

Lorenzo. I thank your honour. For my part, my lord, 
My purpose was not to have seen you here ; 230 

But meeting with Salanio by the way, 
He did intreat me, past all saying nay, 
To come with him along. 

Salanio. I did, my lord ; 

And I have reason for it. Signior Antonio 
Commends him to you. [Gives Bassanio a letter. 

Bassanio. Ere I ope his letter, 

I pray you, tell me how my good friend doth. 

Salanio. Not sick, my lord, unless it be in mind ; 
Nor well, unless in mind : his letter there 
Will show you his estate. 

Gratiano. Nerissa, cheer yon stranger ; bid her 
welcome. 240 

Your hand, Salanio : what's the news from Venice ? 
How doth that royal merchant, good Antonio ? 
I know he will be glad of our success ; 
We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece. 

Salanio. I would you had won the fleece that he hath lost. 

Portia. There are some shrewd contents in yon same 
paper, 
That steals the colour from Bassanio's cheek : 
Some dear friend dead ; else nothing in the world 
Could turn so much the constitution 
Of any constant man. What, worse and worse ! 250 

With leave, Bassanio ; I am half yourself, 
And I must freely have the half of anything 
That this same paper brings you. 

Bassanio. sweet Portia, 

239. Ms estate, his condition. 
246. shrewd, accursed, biting. 
250. constant, steadfast. 



118 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. Sc. ii. 

Here are a few of the unpleasant'st words 

That ever blotted paper ! Gentle lady, 

"When I did first impart my love to you, 

I freely told you, all the wealth I had 

Ean in my veins, I was a gentleman ; 

And then I told you true : and yet, dear lady, 

Eating myself at nothing, you shall see 200 

How much I was a braggart. When I told you 

My state was nothing, I should then have told you 

That I was worse than nothing ; for, indeed, 

I have engaged myself to a dear friend, 

Engaged my friend to his mere enemy, 

To feed my means. Here is a letter, lady ; 

The paper as the body of my friend, 

And every word in it a gaping wound, 

Issuing life-blood. But is it true, Salanio ? 

Have all his ventures f ail'd ? What, not one hit ? 270 

From Tripolis, from Mexico and England, 

From Lisbon, Barbary and India ? 

And not one vessel 'scape the dreadful touch 

Of merchant-marring rocks ? 

Salanio. Not one, my lord. 

Besides, it should appear, that if he had 
The present money to discharge the Jew, 
He would not take it. Never did I know 
A creature, that did bear the shape of man, 
So keen and greedy to confound a man : 
He plies the duke at morning and at night, 
And doth impeach the freedom of the state, 280 

If they deny him justice : twenty merchants, 
The duke himself, and the magnificoes 

262. state, estate. 

265. his mere enemy, his absolute, unqualified enemy. 

278. confound, ruin. 

280. doth impeach the freedom of the state. Cf. iv. 1. 38. 



Act III. Sc. ii.] THE MERCHANT OP VENICE 119 

Of greatest port, have all persuaded with him ; 
But none can drive him from the envious plea 
Of forfeiture, of justice and his bond. 

Jessica. When I was with him I have heard him swear 
To Tubal and to Chus, his countrymen, 
That he would rather have Antonio's flesh 
Than twenty times the value of the sum 
That he did owe him : and I know, my lord, 290 

If law, authority and power deny not, 
It will go hard with poor Antonio. 

Portia. Is it your dear friend that is thus in trouble ? 

Bassanio. The dearest friend to me, the kindest man, 
The best-condition'd and unwearied spirit 
In doing courtesies, and one in whom 
The ancient Eoman honour more appears 
Than any that draws breath in Italy. 

Portia. What sum owes he the Jew ? 

Bassanio. For me three thousand ducats. 

Portia. What, no more ? 300 

Pay him six thousand, and deface the bond ; 
Double six thousand, and then treble that, 
Before a friend of this description 
Shall lose a hair through Bassanio's fault. 
First go with me to church and call me wife, 
And then away to Venice to your friend ; 
For never shall you lie by Portia's side 
With an unquiet soul. You shall have gold 
To pay the petty debt twenty times over : 
When it is paid, bring your true friend along. 310 

My maid Nerissa and myself meantime 

283. Of greatest port. Cf. i. 1. 9. 

284. the envious plea, the hateful, malicious plea. 

295. The best-condition' d, i. e., the hest disposed, having the kindliest 
disposition or nature. Cf. above " if he have the condition of a saint and 
the complexion of a devil." and unwearied spirit, i. e., and the most 
unwearied spirit. 



120 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. Sc. iii. 

Will live as maids and widows. Come, away ! 
For you shall hence upon your wedding-day : 
Bid your friends welcome, show a merry cheer : 
Since you are dear bought, I will love you dear. 
But let me hear the letter of your friend. 316 

Bassanio. [Reads'] Sweet Bassanio, my ships have all 
miscarried, my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very 
low, my bond to the Jew is forfeit ; and since in paying 
it, it is impossible I should live, all debts are cleared be- 
tween you and I, if I might but see you at my death. 
Notwithstanding, use your pleasure : if your love do not 
persuade you to come, let not my letter. 

Portia. love, dispatch all business, and be gone ! 325 
Bassanio. Since I have your good leave to go away, 
I will make haste : but, till I come again, 
No bed shall e'er be guilty of my stay, 
No rest be interposer 'twixt us twain. [Exeunt. 



6 



Scene III. Venice. A street. 

Enter Shylock, Salaeino, Antonio, and Gaoler. 

Shylock. Gaoler, look to him : tell not me of mercy ; 
This is the fool that lent out money gratis : 
Gaoler, look to him. 

Antonio. Hear me yet, good Shylock. 

Shylock. I'll have my bond ; speak not against my bond : 
I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond. 
Thou call'dst me dog before thou hadst a cause ; 
But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs : 
The duke shall grant me justice. I do wonder, 
Thou naughty gaoler, that thou art so fond 
To come abroad with him at his request. 10 

314. a merry cheer, a merry countenance. 
3. Hear me yet, hear me at least. 

9. naughty, worthless, wicked. "This word, now banished to the 
nursery, had formerly a wider meaning " (Clarendon), fond, foolish. 



Act III. Sc. iii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 121 

Antonio. I pray thee, hear me speak. 

Shylock. I'll have my bond ; I will not hear thee speak : 
I'll have my bond ; and therefore speak no more. 
I'll not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool, 
To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield 
To Christian intercessors. Follow not ; 
I'll have no speaking : I will have my bond. [Exit, 

Salarino. It is the most impenetrable cur 
That ever kept with men. 

Antonio. Let him alone : 

I'll follow him no more with bootless prayers. 20 

He seeks my life ; his reason well I know : 
I oft deliver'd from his forfeitures 
Many that have at times made moan to me ; 
Therefore he hates me. 

Salarino. I am sure the duke 

Will never grant this forfeiture to hold. 

Antonio. The duke cannot deny the course of law : 
For the commodity that strangers have 
With us in Venice, if it be denied, 
Will much impeach the justice of his state ; 
Since that the trade and profit of the city 30 

Consisteth of all nations. Therefore, go : 
These griefs and losses have so bated me, 
That I shall hardly spare a pound of flesh 
To-morrow to my bloody creditor. 
Well, gaoler, on. Pray God, Bassanio come 
To see me pay his debt, and then I care not ! [Exeunt. 

19. kept with men, lived with men. 

27. For the commodity, etc. Commodity seems to mean ' the advan- 
tage which consists in equality hefore the law'; i.e., " the refusal of the 
usual facilities enjoyed hy strangers in Venice will bring in serious ques- 
tion the justice of the state." 

32. so bated me, so reduced me (in weight). 

33. shall hardly spare, shall with difficulty spare. 



122 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. Sc. iv. 



Scene IV. Belmont. A room in Portia's house. 

Enter Portia, Nerissa, Lorenzo, Jessica, and 
Balthasar. 

Lorenzo. Madam, although I speak it in your presence, 
You have a noble and a true conceit 
Of god-like amity ; which appears most strongly 
In bearing thus the absence of your lord. 
But if you knew to whom you show this honour, 
How true a gentleman you send relief, 
How dear a lover of my lord your husband, 
I know you would be prouder of the work 
Than customary bounty can enforce you. 

Portia. I never did repent for doing good, 10 

Nor shall not now : for in companions 
That do converse and waste the time together, 
Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love, 
There must be needs a like proportion 
Of lineaments, of manners and of spirit ; 
Which makes me think that this Antonio, 
Being the bosom lover of my lord, 
Must needs be like my lord. If it be so, 
How little is the cost I have bestow'd 
In purchasing the semblance of my soul I 20 

From out the state of hellish misery ! 
This comes too near the praising of myself ; 
Therefore no more of it : hear other things. 

2. conceit, conception, i. e., "you have a noble conception of the more 
than human love which binds Antonio and Bassanio together " (Deighton). 

6. How true, i. e., to how true. 

9. than customary bounty, etc., i. e., "than commonplace kindness 
can oblige you to be " (Withers) ; "lam sure you would feel more pride in 
what you are doing than you could possibly be made to feel by any act of 
ordinary kindness " (Deighton). 

12. waste the time, spend the time. 

20. the semblance, i. e., Antonio, of my soul, i. e., Bassanio. 



Act III. Sc. iv.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 123 

Lorenzo, I commit into your hands 

The husbandry and manage of my house 

Until my lord's return : for mine own part, 

I have toward heaven breathed a secret vow 

To live in prayer and contemplation, 

Only attended by Nerissa here, 

Until her husband and my lord's return : 30 

There is a monastery two miles off ; 

And there will we abide. I do desire you 

Not to deny this imposition ; 

The which my love and some necessity 

Now lays upon you. 

Lorenzo. Madam, with all my heart ; 

I shall obey you in all fair commands. 

Portia. My people do already know my mind, 
And will acknowledge you and Jessica 
In place of Lord Bassanio and myself. 
And so farewell, till we shall meet again. 40 

Lorenzo. Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on 
you! 

Jessica. I wish your ladyship all heart's content. 

Portia. I thank you for your wish, and am well pleased 
To wish it back on you : fare you well, Jessica. 

[Exeunt Jessica and Lorenzo. 
Now, Balthasar, 

As I have ever found thee honest-true, 
So let me find thee still. Take this same letter, 
And use thou all the endeavour of a man 
In speed to Padua : see thou render this 
Into my cousin's hand, Doctor Bellario ; eo 

And, look, what notes and garments he doth give thee, 
Bring them, I pray thee, with imagined speed 

25. husbandry and manage, stewardship and control. 

33. this imposition, i. e., this office laid upon you. 

52. with imagined speed, with the speed of imagination. 



124 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE |Act III. Sc. iv. 

Unto the tranect, to the common ferry 

Which trades to Venice. Waste no time in words, 

But get thee gone : I shall be there before thee. 

Balthasar. Madam, I go with all convenient speed. 

[Exit. 

Portia. Come on, Nerissa ; I have work in hand 
That you yet know not of : we '11 see our husbands 
Before they think of us. 

JSferissa. Shall they see us ? 

Portia. They shall, Nerissa ; but in such a habit, eo 
That they shall think we are accomplished 
With that we lack. I '11 hold thee any wager, 
When we are both accoutred like young men, 
I '11 prove the prettier fellow of the two, 
And wear my dagger with the braver grace, 
And speak between the change of man and boy 
With a reed voice, and tarn two mincing steps 
Into a manly stride, and speak of frays 
Like a fine bragging youth, and tell quaint lies, 
How honourable ladies sought my love, ?o 

Which I denying, they fell sick and died ; 
I could not do withal ; then I '11 repent, 
And wish, for all that, that I had not kill'd them ; 
And twenty of these puny lies I '11 tell, 
That men shall swear I have discontinued school 
Above a twelvemonth. I have within my mind 
A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks, 
Which I will practise. 

But come, I '11 tell thee all my whole device 8i 

When I am in my coach, which stays for us 
At the park gate ; and therefore haste away, 
For we must measure twenty miles to-day. [Exeunt. 

72. I could not do withal, I could not help it. 



Act III. Sc. v.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 125 

Scene V. The same. A garden. 

Enter Launcelot and Jessica. 

Launcelot. Yes, truly ; for, look you, the sins of the 
father are to be laid upon the children : therefore, I 
promise ye, I fear you. I was always plain with you, and 
so now I speak my agitation of the matter : therefore be 
of good cheer, for truly I think you are damned. 

Jessica. I shall be saved by my husband ; he hath made 
me a Christian. 22 

Launcelot. Truly, the more to blame he : we were 
Christians enow before ; e'en as many as could well live, 
one by another. This making of Christians will raise the 
price of hogs : if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall 
not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money. 
Enter Lorenzo. 

Jessica. 1 11 tell my husband, Launcelot, what you say : 
here he comes. 30 

Lorenzo. I shall grow jealous of you shortly, Launcelot, 
if you thus get my wife into corners. 

Jessica. Nay, you need not fear us, Lorenzo : Launcelot 
and I are out. He tells me flatly, there is no mercy for 
me in heaven, because I am a Jew's daughter : and he 
says, you are no good member of the commonwealth, for 
in converting Jews to Christians, you raise the price of 
pork. 39 

Lorenzo. How every fool can play upon the word ! I 
think the best grace of wit will shortly turn into silence, 
and discourse grow commendable in none only but parrots. 
Go in, sirrah ; bid them prepare for dinner. 

Launcelot. That is done sir ; they have all stomachs. 

Lorenzo. Goodly Lord, what a wit-snapper are you ! then 
bid them prepare dinner. 

3. fear you, fear for you. 



126 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act III. Sc. v, 

Launcelot. That is done too, sir ; only ■ cover ? is the 
word. 

Lorenzo. Will you cover then, sir ? 

Launcelot. Not so, sir, neither ; I know my duty. 59 

Lorenzo. Yet more quarrelling with occasion ! Wilt 
thou show the whole wealth of thy wit in an instant ? I 
pray thee, understand a plain man in his plain meaning : 
go to thy fellows ; bid them cover the table, serve in the 
meat, and we will come in to dinner. 

Launcelot. For the table, sir, it shall be served in ; for 
the meat, sir, it shall be covered ; for your coming in to 
dinner, sir, why, let it be as humours and conceits shall 
govern. [Exit. 

Lorenzo. dear discretion, how his words are suited ! 70 
The fool hath planted in his memory 
An army of good words ; and I do know 
A many fools, that stand in better place, 
Garnish'd like him, that for a tricksy word 
Defy the matter. How cheer'st thou, Jessica ? 
And now, good sweet, say thy opinion, 
How dost thou like the Lord Bassanio's wife ? 

Jessica. Past all expressing. It is very meet 
The Lord Bassanio live an upright life ; 
For, having such a blessing in his lady, so 

He finds the joys of heaven here on earth ; 
And if on earth he do not mean it, then 
In reason he should never come to heaven. 
Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match 

56. cover. Launcelot is playing upon the two meanings of the word, 
viz., to lay a table for a meal and to put the hat on the head. 

60. quarrelling with occasion, ' quibbling on every opportunity.' * 

74. garnish'd, 'equipped' (Eolfe) ; 'their brains furnished like his' 
(Clarendon). 

75. Defy the matter, 'set the meaning at defiance.' How cheer'st 
thou, i. e., how farest thou. 

82. mean it, i. e., 'to live an upright life.' 



Act III. Sc. v.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 127 

And on the wager lay two earthly women, 
And Portia one, there must be something else 
Pawn'd with the other, for the poor rude world 
Hath not her fellow. 

Lorenzo. Even such a husband 

Hast thou of me as she is for a wife. 

Jessica. Nay, but ask my opinion too of that. 90 

Lorenzo. I will anon : first, let us go to dinner. 

Jessica. Nay, let me praise you while I have a stomach. 

Lorenzo. No, pray thee, let it serve for table-talk, 
Then, howsoe'er thou speak'st, 'mong other things 
I shall digest it. 

Jessica. Well, I '11 set you forth. {Exeunt. 

89. Hast thou of (in) me. See Abbott, 172. 



ACT IV. 

Scene I. Venice. A court of justice. 

Enter the Duke, the Magnificoes, Antonio, Bassanio, 
Gratiano, Salanio, and others. 

Duke. What, is Antonio here ? 

Antonio. Ready, so please your grace. 

Duke. I am sorry for thee : thou art come to answer 
A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch 
Uncapable of pity, void and empty 
From any dram of mercy. 

Antonio. I have heard 

Your grace hath ta'en great pains to qualify 
His rigorous course ; but since he stands obdurate 
And that no lawful means can carry me 
Out of his envy's reach, I do oppose 10 

My patience to his fury, and am arm'd 
To suffer, with a quietness of spirit, 
The very tyranny and rage of his. 

Duke. Go one, and call the Jew into the court. 

Salanio. He is ready at the door : he comes, my lord. 
Enter Shylock. 

Duke. Make room, and let him stand before our face. 
Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too, 
That thou but lead'st this fashion of thy malice 
To the last hour of act ; and then 't is thought 

7. qualify, temper, moderate. 

18. but lead'st this fashion, etc., i.e., " that you are merely protract- 
ing your display of malice in this way to the latest possible minute, i. e., 
the minute when it will give way to pity" (Deighton). 
128 



Act IV. Sc. i.] THE MERCHANT OP VENICE 129 

Thou'lt show thy mercy and remorse more strange 20 

Than is thy strange apparent cruelty ; 

And where thou now exact'st the penalty, 

Which is a pound of this poor merchant's flesh, 

Thou wilt not only loose the forfeiture, 

But, touch'd with human gentleness and love, 

Forgive a moiety of the principal ; 

Glancing an eye of pity on his losses, 

That have of late so huddled on his back, 

Enow to press a royal merchant down 

And pluck commiseration of his state 30 

From brassy bosoms and rough hearts of flint, 

From stubborn Turks and Tartars, never train 'd 

To offices of tender courtesy. 

We all expect a gentle answer, Jew. 

Shylock. I have possess'd your grace of what I purpose ; 
And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn 
To have the due and forfeit of my bond : 
If you deny it, let the danger light 
Upon your charter and your city's freedom. 1 
You'll ask me, why I rather choose to have 40 

A weight of carrion flesh than to receive 
Three thousand ducats. I '11 not answer that : 
But, say, it is my humour : is it answer'd ? 
What if my house be troubled with a rat 
And I be pleased to give ten thousand ducats 
To have it baned ? What, are you answer'd yet ? 
Some men there are love not a gaping pig ; 
Some, that are mad if they behold a cat ; for affection, 50 

20. remorse, pity. 

22. where, whereas. 

26. moiety, portion. 

46. haned, killed. 

50. for affection, etc. "For a man's individual propensity, which is 
all powerful over his feelings, sways them hither and thither, towards 
what it likes and from what it loathes." 
9 



130 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. Sc. i. 

Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood 

Of what it likes or loathes. Now, for your answer. 

As there is no firm reason to be render'd, 

Why he cannot abide a gaping pig ; 

Why he, a harmless necessary cat ; 

So can I give no reason, nor I will not, 

More than a lodged hate and a certain loathing 60 

I bear Antonio, that I follow thus 

A losing suit against him. Are you answer'd? 

Bassanio. This is no answer, thou unfeeling man, 
To excuse the current of thy cruelty. 

Shyloch. I am not bound to please thee with my answers. 

Bassanio. Do all men kill the things they do not love ? 

Shyloch. Hates any man the thing he would not kill ? 

Bassanio. Every offence is not a hate at first. 

Shyloch. Wliat, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee 
twice ? 

Antonio. I pray you, think you question with the Jew : ?o 
You may as well go stand upon the beach 
And bid the main flood bate his usual height ; 
You may as well use question with the wolf 
Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb ; 
You may as well forbid the mountain pines 
To wag their high tops and to make no noise, 
When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven ; 
You may as well do any thing most hard, 
As seek to soften that — than which what's harder? — 
His Jewish heart : therefore, I do beseech you, so 

Make no more offers, use no farther means, 
But with all brief and plain conveniency 
Let me have judgement and the Jew his will. 

Bassanio. Eor thy three thousand ducats here is six. 

70. think you question with, remember that you are arguing with, 
remonstrating with. 

72. the main flood, the ocean tide. 



Act IV. Sc. i.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 131 

Shylock. If every ducat in six thousand ducats 
Were in six parts and every part a ducat, 
I would not draw them ; I would have my bond. 

Duke. How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none ? 

Shylock. What judgement shall I dread, doing no wrong ? 
You have among you many a purchased slave, eo 

Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules, 
You use in abject and in slavish parts, 
Because you bought them : shall I say to you, 
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs ? 
Why sweat they under burthens ? let their beds 
Be made as soft as yours and let their palates 
Be season'd with such viands ? You will answer 
c The slaves are ours ' : so do I answer you : 
The pound of flesh, which I demand of him, . 
Is dearly bought ; 't is mine and I will have it. 100 

If you deny me, fie upon your law ! 
There is no force in the decrees of Venice. 
I stand for judgement : answer ; shall I have it ? 

Duke. Upon my power I may dismiss this court, 
Unless Bellario, a learned doctor, 
Whom I have sent for to determine this, 
Come here to-day. 

Salanio. My lord, here stays without 

A messenger with letters from the doctor, 
New come from Padua. 

Duke. Bring us the letters ; call the messenger. no 

Bassanio. Good cheer, Antonio ! What, man, courage 
yet! 
The Jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones and all, 
Ere thou shalt lose for me one drop of blood. 
\ Antonio. I am a tainted wether of the flock, 
Meetest for death : the weakest kind of fruit 

92. parts, employments. 

104. Upon, ' in accordance with ' (Abbott, 192). 



132 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. Sc. i. 

Drops earliest to the ground ; and so let me : 
You cannot better be employ'd, Bassanio, 
Than to live still and write mine epitaph. 

Enter Nekissa, dressed like a lawyer's clerk. 

Duke. Came you from Padua, from Bellario ? 

Nerissa. From both, my lord. Bellario greets your 
grace. [Presenting a letter. 120 

Bassanio. Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly ? 

Shylock. To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there. 

Gratiano. Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew, 
Thou makest thy knife keen : but no metal can, 
No, not the hangman's axe, bear half the keenness 
Of thy sharp envy. Can no prayers pierce thee ? 

Shylock. No, none that thou hast wit enough to make. 

Gratiano. 0, be thou damn'd, inexorable dog ! 
And for thy life let justice be accused. 
Thou almost makest me waver in my faith 130 

To hold opinion with Pythagoras, 
That souls of animals infuse themselves 
Into the trunks of men : thy currish spirit 
Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter, 
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet, 
And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam, 
Infused itself in thee ; for thy desires 
Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous. 

Shylock. Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond, 
Thou but offend'st thy lungs to speak so loud : 140 

Repair thy wit, good youth, or it will fall 
To cureless ruin. I stand here for law. 

Duke. This letter from Bellario doth commend 
A young and learned doctor to our court. 
Where is he ? 

131. To hold, so as to hold. 

135. his fell soul fleet, his cruel soul take flight. 



Act IV. Sc. i.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 133 

Nerissa. He attendeth here hard by, 
To know your answer, whether you'll admit him. 

Duke. With all my heart. Some three or four of you 
Go give him courteous conduct to this place. 
Meantime the court shall hear Bellario's letter. 149 

Clerk. [Reads'] Your grace shall understand that at 
the receipt of your letter I am very sick : but in the 
instant that your messenger came, in loving visitation 
was with me a young doctor of Eome; his name is 
Balthasar. I acquainted him with the cause in contro- 
versy between the Jew and Antonio the merchant : we 
turned o'er many books together : he is furnished with 
my opinion ; which, bettered with his own learning, the 
greatness whereof I cannot enough commend, comes with 
him, at my importunity, to fill up your grace's request in 
my stead. I beseech you, let his lack of years be no im- 
pediment to let him lack a reverend estimation; for I 
never knew so young a body with so old a head. I leave 
him to your gracious acceptance, whose trial shall better 
publish his commendation. 166 

Duke. You hear the learn'd Bellario, what he writes : 
And here, I take it, is the doctor come. 

Enter Portia, dressed like a doctor of laivs. 

Give me your hand. Come you from old Bellario ? 

Portia. I did, my lord. 

Duke. You are welcome : take your place. 170 

Are you acquainted with the difference 
That holds this present question in the court ? 

Portia. I am informed throughly of the cause. 
Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew ? 

162. be no impediment to let him lack, be no such impediment as to 
let him lack, i. e„ ' be no hindrance to his receiving.' 
165. whose trial, ' for his trial ' (Abbott, 263). 
171. the difference, the matter in dispute. 
173. throughly, thoroughly. 



134 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. Sc. i. 

Duke. Antonio and old Shylock, both stand forth. 

Portia. Is your name Shylock ? 

Shylock. Shylock is my name. 

Portia. Of a strange nature is the suit you follow ; 
Yet in such rule that the Venetian law 
Cannot impugn you as you do proceed. 
You stand within his danger, do you not ? iso 

Antonio. Ay, so he says. 

Portia. Do you confess the bond ? 

Antonio. I do. 

Portia. Then must the Jew be merciful. 

Shylock. On what compulsion must I ? tell me that. 

Portia. The quality of mercy is not strain'd, 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath : it is twice blest ; 
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes : 
'T is mightiest in the mightiest : it becomes 

178. yet in such rule, etc., i. e., yet "so strictly according to form, 
that the law can detect no flaw in your procedure " (Clarendon). 

180. within his danger, within his power. 

184. the quality of mercy, i.e., " the nature of mercy is to act freely, 
not from constraint " (Hudson). 

184. " It is worth observing how naturally this magnificent speech 
rises out of the ordinary level of the dialogue, and has not the least 
appearance of being a purpureus pannus. Shylock takes hold of the 
word ' must,' and gives it an emphasis and a meaning which it had 
not as used by Portia " (Clarendon). 

"Does she virtually say, 'You are right, Shylock, in objecting to 
the word " must " ; it is characteristic of mercy that it acts freely, not 
from constraint ' ? " (Sprague). 

" There is a tendency, I think, in repeating this familiar line, to 
lay the chiefest emphasis on 'mercy.' Is this right? In reply to 
Shylock's demand for a proof of his compulsion to be merciful, Por- 
tia exclaims that the very characteristic of mercy is that there can be 
no compulsion in its exercise. Its very nature is to fall like the rain. 
Should not ' quality,' then, receive the greater, and ' mercy ' a sec- 
ondary, emphasis ? " (Furness). 



ActlV.Sci.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 135 

The throned monarch better than his crown ; 

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 

The attribute to awe and majesty, 

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; 

But mercy is above this sceptred sway; 

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, 

It is an attribute to God himself ; 

And earthly power doth then show likest God s 

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 

Though justice be thy plea, consider this, 

That, in the course of justice, none of us 

Should see salvation : we do pray for mercy ; 

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 

The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much 

To mitigate the justice of thy plea ; 

Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice 

Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there. 
Shylock. My deeds upon my head ! I crave the law, 

The penalty and forfeit of my bond. 

Portia. Is he not able to discharge the money ? 
Bassanio. Yes, here I tender it for him in the court ; 

Yea, twice the sum : if that will not ^suffice, 

I will be bound to pay it ten times o'er ; 

On forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart : 

If this will not suffice, it must appear 

That malice bears down truth. And I beseech you, 

Wrest once the law to your authority : 

To do a great right, do a little wrong, 

And curb this cruel devil of his will. _ 

Portia- It must not be ; there is no power in Venice 

Can alter a decree established : 

'T will be recorded for a precedent, 

191. attribute to awe and majesty, " • Awe,' properly , o f the subject ; 
' majesty ' of the king, the cause of ' awe.' By hendiadys, both might be 

taTen together, equivalent to a W ful najesty » (Allen, quoted by Furness). 



136 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. Sc. i. 

And many an error by the same example 
Will rush into the state : it cannot be. 

Shylock. A Daniel come to judgement ! yea, a Daniel ! 
wise young judge, how I do honour thee ! 

Portia. I pray you, let me look upon the bond. 

Shylock. Here 't is, most reverend doctor, here it is. 

Portia. Shylock, there's thrice thy money offered thee. 

Shylock. An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven : 
Shall I lay perjury upon my soul ? 
No, not for Venice. 

Portia. Why, this bond is forfeit ; 230 

And lawfully by this the Jew may claim 
A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off 
Nearest the merchant's heart. Be merciful : 
Take thrice thy money ; bid me tear the bond. 

Shylock. When it is paid according to the tenour. 
It doth appear you are a worthy judge ; 
You know the law, your exposition 
Hath been most sound : I charge you by the law, 
Whereof you are a well-deserving pillar, 
Proceed to judgement : by my soul I swear 240 

There is no power in the tongue of man 
To alter me : I stay here on my bond. 

Antonio. Most heartily I do beseech the court 
To give the judgement. 

Portia. Why then, thus it is : 

You must prepare your bosom for his knife. 

Shylock. noble judge ! excellent young man ! 

Portia. For the intent and purpose of the law 
Hath full relation to the penalty, 
Which here appeareth due upon the bond. 

Shylock. 'T is very true : wise and upright judge ! 250 
How much more elder art thou than thy looks ! 

248. full relation to the penalty, i. e., 'the law relating to contracts is 
fully applicable in this case.' 



Act IV Sc. i.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 137 

Portia. Therefore lay bare your bosom. 

Shyhck. Ay, his breast: 

So says the bond : doth it not, noble judge? 
« Nearest his heart ' : those are the very words. 

Portia. It is so. Are there balance here to weigh 
The flesh ? 

Shylock. I have them ready. 

Portia. Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge, 
To stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to death. 

Shylock. Is it so nominated in the bond? 

Portia. It is not so express'd : but what of that ? 260 
'T were good you do so much for charity. 

Shylock. I cannot find it ; 't is not in the bond. 

Portia. You, merchant, have you anything to say? 

Antonio. But little : I am arm'd and well prepared. 
Give me your hand, Bassanio : fare you well ! 
Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you ; 
For herein Fortune shows herself more kind 
Than is her custom : it is still her use 
To let the wretched man outlive his wealth, 
To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow 270 

An age of poverty ; from which lingering penance 
Of such misery doth she cut me off. 
Commend me to your honourable wife : 
Tell her the process of Antonio's end ; 
Say how I loved you, speak me fair in death ; 
And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge 
Whether Bassanio had not once a love. 
Eepent but you that you shall lose your friend, 
And he repents not that he pays your debt ; 
For if the Jew do cut but deep enough, 28( 

I'll pay it presently with all my heart. 

Bassanio. Antonio, I am married to a wife 
Which is as dear to me as life itself ; 
But life itself, my wife, and all the world, 

10 \Q 



138 THE MERCHANT OP VENICE [Act IV. Sc. i. 

Are not with me esteem'd above thy life : 
I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all 
Here to this devil, to deliver you. 

Portia. Your wife would give you little thanks for 
that, 
If she were by, to hear you make the offer. 

Gratiano. I have a wife, whom, I protest, I love : 290 
I would she were in heaven, so she could 
Entreat some power to change this currish Jew. 

Nerissa. 'T is well you offer it behind her back ; 
The wish would make else an unquiet house. 

Shyloch. These be the Christian husbands. I have a 
daughter ; 
Would any of the stock of Barrabas 

Had been her husband rather than a Christian. [Aside, 
We trifle time : I pray thee, pursue sentence. 

Portia. A pound of that same merchant's flesh is thine : 
The court awards it, and the law doth give it. 300 

Shyloclc. Most rightful judge ! 

Portia. And you must cut this flesh from off his breast : 
The law allows it, and the court awards it. 

Shyloch. Most learned judge ! A sentence ! Come, 
prepare ! 

Portia. Tarry a little ; there is something else. 
This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood ; 
The words expressly are ' a pound of flesh ' : 
Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh ; 
But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed 
One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods 310 

Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate 
Unto the state of Venice. 

Gratiano. upright judge! Mark, Jew: learned 
judge ! 

Shyloch. Is that the law ? 

Portia. Thyself shalt see the act : 



Act IV. Sc. i.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 139 

For, as thou urgest justice, be assured 

Thou shalt have justice, more than thou desirest. 

Gratiano. learned judge ! Mark, Jew : a learned 
judge ! 

Shyloch. I take this offer, then ; pay the bond thrice 
And let the Christian go. 

Bassanio. Here is the money. 

Portia. Soft! 320 

The Jew shall have all justice ; soft ! no haste : 
He shall have nothing but the penalty. 

Gratiano. Jew ! an upright judge, a learned judge ! 

Portia. Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh. 
Shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more 
But just a pound of flesh : if thou cut'st more 
Or less than a just pound, be it but so much 
As makes it light or heavy in the substance, 
Or the division of the twentieth part 
Of one poor scruple, nay, if the scale do turn 330 

But in the estimation of a hair, 
Thou diest and all thy goods are confiscate. 

Gratiano. A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew ! 
Now, infidel, I have you on the hip. 

Portia. Why doth the Jew pause ? take thy forfeiture. 

Shyloch. Give me my principal, and let me go. 

Bassanio. I have it ready for thee ; here it is. 

Portia. He hath refused it in the open court : 
He shall have merely justice and his bond. 

Gratiano. A Daniel, still say I, a second Daniel ! 340 
I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word. 

Shyloch. Shall I not have barely my principal ? 

Portia. Thou shalt have nothing but the forfeiture, 
To be so taken at thy peril, Jew. 

Shyloch. Why, then the devil give him good of it ! 
I'll stay no longer question. 

328. the substance, the amount (Eolfe). 



140 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. Sc. i. 

Portia. Tarry, Jew : 

The law hath yet another hold on you. 
It is enacted in the laws of Venice, 
If it be proved against an alien 

That by direct or indirect attempts 350 

He seek the life of any citizen, 
The party 'gainst the which he doth contrive 
Shall seize one half his goods ; the other half 
Comes to the privy coffer of the state ; 
And the offender's life lies in the mercy 
Of the duke only, 'gainst all other voice. 
In which predicament, I say, thou stand'st ; 
For it appears, by manifest proceeding, 
That indirectly and directly too 

Thou hast contrived against the very life 360 

Of the defendant ; and thou hast incurr'd 
The danger formerly by me rehearsed. 
Down therefore and beg mercy of the duke. 

Gratiano. Beg that thou mayst have leave to hang thy- 
self: 
And yet, thy wealth being forfeit to the state, 
Thou hast not left the value of a cord ; 
Therefore thou must be hang'd at the state's charge. 

Duke. That thou shalt see the difference of our spirits, 
I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it : 
For half thy wealth, it is Antonio's ; 370 

The other half comes to the general state, 
Which humbleness may drive unto a fine. 

Portia. Ay, for the state, not for Antonio. 

Shyloch. Nay, take my life and all ; pardon not that : 
You take my house when you do take the prop 
That doth sustain my house ; you take my life 
When you do take the means whereby I live. 

Portia. What mercy can you render him, Antonio ? 

373. not for Antonio. — ' Antonio's half cannot be so commuted.' 



Act IV. Sc. i.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 141 

Gratiano. A halter gratis ; nothing else, for God's sake. 
- ', A 7ito?iio. So please my lord the duke and all the court 380 
To quit the fine for one half of his goods, 
I am content ; so he will let me have 
The other half in use, to render it, 
Upon his death, unto the gentleman 
That lately stole his daughter : 
Two things provided more, that, for this favour, 
He presently become a Christian ; 
The other, that he do record a gift, 
Here in the court, of all he dies possess'd, 
Unto his son Lorenzo and his daughter. 3co 

Duke. He shall do this, or else I do recant 
The pardon that I late pronounced here. 

Portia. Art thou contented, Jew ? what dost thou say ? 

Shylock. I am content. 

Portia. Clerk, draw a deed of gift. 

Shylock. I pray you, give me leave to go from hence ; 
I am not well : send the deed after me, 
And I will sign it. 

Duke. Get thee gone, but do it. 

Gratiano. In christening shalt thou have two god- 
fathers : 
Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more, 
To bring thee to the gallows, not the font. 

[Exit Shylock. 400 

Duke. Sir, I entreat you home with me to dinner. 

Portia. I humbly do desire your grace of pardon : 
I must away this night toward Padua. 
And it is meet I presently set forth. 

Duke. I am sorry that your leisure serves you not. 
Antonio, gratify this gentleman, 
For, in my mind, you are much bound to him. 

[Exeunt Duke and his train. 

406. gratify, recompense. 



142 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. Sc. i. 

Bassanio. Most worthy gentleman, I and my friend 
Have by your wisdom been this day acquitted 
Of grievous penalties ; in lieu whereof, 410 

Three thousand ducats, due unto the Jew, 
We freely cope your courteous pains withal. 

Antonio. And stand indebted, over and above, 
In love and service to you evermore. 

Portia. He is well paid that is well satisfied ; 
And I, delivering you, am satisfied 
And therein do account myself well paid : 
My mind was never yet more mercenary. 
I pray you, know me when we meet again : 
I wish you well, and so I take my leave. 420 

Bassanio. Dear sir, of force I must attempt you further : 
Take some remembrance of us, as a tribute, 
Not as a fee : grant me two things, I pray you, 
Not to deny me, and to pardon me. 

Portia. You press me far, and therefore I will yield. 
[To Antonio] Give me your gloves, I'll wear them for 

your sake ; 
[To Bassanio~\ And, for your love, I'll take this ring 

from you : 
Do not draw back your hand ; I '11 take no more ; 
And you in love shall not deny me this. 

Bassanio. This ring, good sir, alas, it is a trifle ! 430 

I will not shame myself to give you this. 

Portia. I will have nothing else but only this ; 
And now methinks I have a mind to it. 

Bassanio. There's more depends on this than on the value. 

412. cope, etc., — "with three thousand ducats we gladly requite the 
trouble you have so courteously taken in our behalf." 

421. of force, of necessity, i. e., 'compelled by a sense of what we owe 
you.' 

429. in love, ' out of the love you profess.' shall not deny, will not 
deny or cannot possibly deny. 

431. to give you this, i. e., by giving you this. See Abbott, 356. 



Act IV. Sc. ii.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 143 

The dearest ring in Venice will I give you, 
And find it out by proclamation : 
Only for this, I pray you, pardon me. 

Portia. I see, sir, you are liberal in offers : 
You taught me first to beg ; and now methinks 
You teach me how a beggar should be answer'd. mo 

Bassanio. Good sir, this ring was given me by my wife ; 
And when she put it on, she made me vow 
That I should neither sell nor give nor lose it. 

Portia. That 'scuse serves many men to save their gifts. 
An if your wife be not a mad-woman, 
And know how well T have deserved the ring, 
She would not hold out enemy for ever, 
For giving it to me. Well, peace be with you ! 

[Exeunt Poetia and Nerissa. 

Antonio. My Lord Bassanio, let him have the ring : 
Let his deservings and my love withal 450 

Be valued 'gainst your wife's commandment. 

Bassanio. Go, Gratiano, run and overtake him ; 
Give him the ring, and bring him, if thou canst, 
Unto Antonio's house : away ! make haste. 

[Exit Gratiano. 
Come, you and I will thither presently ; 
And in the morning early will we both 
Fly toward Belmont : come, Antonio. [Exeunt. 

Scene II. The same. A street. 
Enter Portia and Nerissa. 

Portia. Inquire the Jew's house out, give him this deed 
And let him sign it : we '11 away to-night 
And be a day before our husbands home : 
This deed will be well welcome to Lorenzo. 

456. in the morning early. Cf. iii. 2. 328. 



144 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. Sc. ii. 

Enter Geatiano. 

Gratiano. Fair sir, you are well o'erta'en : 
My Lord Bassanio upon more advice 
Hath sent you here this ring, and doth entreat 
Your company at dinner. 

Portia. That cannot be : 

His riug I do accept most thankfully : 
And so, I pray you, tell him : furthermore, 10 

I pray you, show my youth old Shylock's house. 

Gratiano. That will I do. 

Nerissa. Sir, I would speak with you. 

[Aside to Portia]. I '11 see if I can get my husband's ring, 
Which I did make him swear to keep for ever. 

Portia. [Aside to Nerissa] Thou mayst, I warrant. 
We shall have old swearing 
That they did give the rings away to men ; 
But we '11 outface them, and outswear them too. 
[Aloud] Away! make haste: thou knowst where I will 
tarry. 

Nerissa. Come, good sir, will you show me to this 
house ? [Exeunt. 

6. upon more advioe, upon further consideration. 
16. old swearing. "Old was a frequent in tensive in colloquial speech; 
very much as huge is used now " (Hudson). 



ACT V. 

Scene I. Belmont. Avenue to Portia's liouse. 
Enter Lorenzo and Jessica. 

Lorenzo. The moon shines bright : in such a night as 
this, 
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees 
And they did make no noise, in such a night 
Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls 
And sigh'd his soul toward the Grecian tents, 
Where Cressid lay that night. 

Jessica. In such a night 

Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew, 
And saw the lion's shadow ere himself, 
And ran dismay'd away. 

Lorenzo. In such a night 

Stood Dido with a willow in her hand 10 

Upon the wild sea banks, and waft her love 
To come again to Carthage. 

Jessica. In such a night 

Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs 
That did renew old ^Eson. 

Lorenzo. In such a night 

Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew 

15. Jessica steal. " Could not Lorenzo have chosen a less suggestive 
word f But, after all, are there not two distinct, and utterly different, 
Jessicas ? This Jessica, whose awakening soul can be saddened by 
sweet music, is not the Jessica of Venice, gilded with stolen ducats. 
In this growth of character is there one of Shakespeare's indications 
of Long Time lying perdue!" (Furness). 

145 



146 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act V. Sc. i. 

And with an unthrift love did run from Venice 
As far as Belmont. 

Jessica. In such a night 

Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well, 
Stealing *her soul with many vows of faith 
And ne'er a true one. 

Lorenzo. In such a night 20 

Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew, 
Slander her love, and he forgave it her. 

Jessica. I would out-night you, did no body come ; 
But, hark, I hear the footing of a man. 

Enter Stephano. 

Lorenzo. Who comes so fast in silence of the night ? 

Stephano. A friend ! 

Lorenzo. A friend ! what friend ? your name, I pray you, 
friend ? 

Stephano. Stephano is my name ; and I bring word 
My mistress will before the break of day 
Be here at Belmont : she doth stray about 30 

By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays 
For happy wedlock hours. 

Lorenzo. Who comes with her ? 

Stephano. Xone but a holy hermit and her maid. 
I pray you, is my master yet return'd ? 

Lorenzo. He is not, nor we have not heard from him. 
But go we in, I pray thee, Jessica, 
And ceremoniously let us prepare 
Some welcome for the mistress of the house. 

Enter Launcelot. 

Launcelot. Sola, sola ! wo ha, ho ! sola, sola ! 
Lorenzo. Who calls ? 40 

Launcelot. Sola ! did you see Master Lorenzo ? 
Master Lorenzo, sola, sola ! 

Lorenzo. Leave hollaing, man : here. 



Act V. Sc. i.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 147 

Launcelot. Sola! where? where? 
Lorenzo. Here. 

Launcelot Tell him there's a post come from my mas- 
ter,.with his horn full of good news : my master will be 
here ere morning. [Exit 

' Lorenzo. Sweet soul, let 's in, and there expect their 
^r coming. 
And yet no matter : why should we go in ? *o 

My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you, 
Within the house, your mistress is at hand ; 
And bring your music forth into the air. 

[Exit Stephano. 
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! 
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music 
Creep in our ears : soft stillness and the night 
Become the touches of sweet harmony.^ 
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven 
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold : 
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st eo 

But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins ; 
Such harmony is in immortal souls; 
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. 

Enter Musicians. 
Come, ho ! and wake Diana with a hymn : 
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear 
And draw her home with music. [Music. 

Jessica. I am never merry when I hear sweet music. 
Lorenzo. The reason is, your spirits are attentive : to 
For do but note a wild and wanton herd, 

57. Become the touches of, are in accord with the notes of. 
59. patines,— small plates, often of gold, used in the celebration of the 
Lord's Supper. 

62. quiring, 'choiring,' singing in concert with. 



US THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act V. Sc. I 

Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, 

Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud, 

Which is the hot condition of their blood ; 

If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, 

Or any air of music touch their ears, 

You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, 

Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze 

By the sweet power of music : therefore the poet 

Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods ; so 

Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, 

But music for the time doth change his nature. 

The man that hath no music in himself, 

Kor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, 

Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils ; 

The motions of his spirit are dull as night 

And his affections dark as Erebus ; 

Let no such man be trusted, \ Mark the music. 

Enter Poetia and Nekissa. 

Portia. That light we see is burning in my hall. 
How far that little candle throws his beams ! 90 

So shines a good deed in a naughty world. 

Nerissa. When the moon shone, we did not see the 
candle. 

Portia. So doth the greater glory dim the less : 
A substitute shines brightly as a king 
Until a king be by, and then his state 
Empties itself, as doth an inland brook 
Into the main of waters. Music ! hark ! 

Nerissa. It is your music, madam, of the house. 

Portia. Nothing is good, I see, without respect : 
Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day. 100 

99. without respeot, ' without regard to circumstances,' — the circum- 
stance in this case being that the music is heard in the stillness of the 
night. 



ActV.Sci.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 149 

Nerissa. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam. 

Portia. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark 
When neither is attended, and I think 
The nightingale, if she should sing by day, 
When every goose is cackling, would be thought 
No better a musician than the wren. 
How many things by season season'd are 
To their right praise and true perfection ! 
Peace, ho ! the moon sleeps with Endymion 
And would not be awaked. [Music ceases. 

Lorenzo. That is the voice, no 

Or I am much deceived, of Portia. 

Portia. He knows me as the blind man knows the 
cuckoo, 
By the bad voice., v 

Lorenzo. ^ Dear lady, welcome home. 

Portia. We have been praying for our husbands' healths, 
Which speed, we hope, the better for our words. 
Are they return'd ? 

Lorenzo. Madam, they are not yet ; 

But there is come a messenger before, 
To signify their coming. 

Portia. Go in, Nerissa ; 

Give order to my servants that they take 
No note at all of our being absent hence ; 120 

Nor you, Lorenzo ; Jessica, nor you. 

[A tucket sounds. 

Lorenzo. Your husband is at hand ; I hear his trumpet : 
We are no tell-tales, madam ; fear you not. 

Portia. This night methinks is but the daylight sick ; 
It looks a little paler : 't is a day, 
Such as the day is when the sun is hid. p. 

103. attended, attended to. See Abbott, 200. 

107. by season, etc. "Good things miss their final flavor of perfec- 
tion unless they are well-timed." 



150 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act V. Sc. i. 

Enter Bassanio, Antonio, Gratiano, and their followers. 

Bassanio. We should hold day with the Antipodes, 
If you would walk in absence of the sun. 

Portia. Let me give light, but let me not be light ; 
For a light wife doth make a heavy husband, 130 

And never be Bassanio so for me : 
But God sort all ! You are welcome home, my lord. 

Bassanio. I thank you, madam. Give welcome to my 
friend. 
This is the man, this is Antonio, 
To whom I am so infinitely bound. 

Portia. You should in all sense be much bound to him, 
For, as I hear, he was much bound for you. 

Antonio. No more than I am well acquitted of. 

Portia. Sir, you are very welcome to our house : 
It must appear in other ways than words, 140 

Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy. 

Gratiano. [To Nerissa'] By yonder moon I swear you 
do me wrong ; 
In faith, I gave it to the judge's clerk. 

Portia. A quarrel, ho, already ! what's the matter? 

Gratiano. About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring 
That she did give me, whose posy was 
For all the world like cutler's poetry 
Upon a knife, ' Love me, and leave me not.' 150 

Nerissa. What talk you of the posy or the value ? 
You swore to me, when I did give it you, 
That you would wear it till your hour of death 
And that it should lie with you in your grave : 
Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths, 
You should have been respective and have kept it. 

127. hold day, etc. " This is making Portia pretty luminous or radiant." 

132. God sort all, God dispose all things. 

141. this breathing courtesy, this courtesy mode of breath, words. 

156. respective, careful, regardful, scrupulous. 



ActV.Sci.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 151 

Gave it a judge's clerk! no, God's my judge, 

The clerk will ne'er wear hair on 's face that had it. 

Gratiano. He will, an if he live to be a man. 

JSferissa. Ay, if a woman live to be a man. ico 

Gratiano. Now, by this hand, I gave it to a youth, 
A kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy, 
No higher than thyself, the judge's clerk, 
A prating boy, that begg'd it as a fee : 
I could not for my heart deny it him. 

Portia. You were to blame, I must be plain with you, 
To part so slightly with your wife's first gift ; 
A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger 
And so riveted with faith unto your flesh. 
I gave my love a ring and made him swear 170 

Never to part with it ; and here he stands ; 
I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it 
Nor pluck it from his finger, for the wealth 
That the world masters. Now, in faith, Gratiano, 
You give your wife too unkind a cause of grief : 
An 't were to me, I should be mad at it. 

Bassanio. [Aside] Why, I were best to cut my left hand 
off 
And swear I lost the ring defending it. 

Gratiano. My Lord Bassanio gave his ring away 
Unto the judge that begg'd it and indeed iso 

Deserved it too ; and then the boy, his clerk, 
That took some pains in writing, he begg'd mine ; 
And neither man nor master would take aught 
But the two rings. 

Portia. "What ring gave you, my lord ? 

Not that, I hope, which you received of me. 

Bassanio. If I could add a lie unto a fault, 
I would deny it ; but you see my finger 
Hath not the ring upon it ; it is gone. 

162. scrubbed, stunted. Cf. scrub oak. 



152 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act V. Sc. i. 

Portia. Even so void is your false heart of truth. isq 

Bassanio. Sweet Portia, 

If you did know to whom I gave the ring, 
If you did know for whom I gave the ring, 
And would conceive for what I gave the ring 
And how unwillingly I left the ring, 
When nought would be accepted but the ring, 
You would abate the strength of your displeasure. 

Portia. If you had known the virtue of the ring, 
Or half her worthiness that gave the ring, 200 

Or your own honour to contain the ring, 
You would not then have parted with the ring. 
What man is there so much unreasonable, 
If you had pleased to have defended it 
With any terms of zeal, wanted the modesty 
To urge the thing held as a ceremony ? 
Nerissa teaches me what to believe : 
I'll die for 't but some woman had the ring. 

Bassanio. No, by my honour, madam, by my soul, 
No woman had it, but a civil doctor, 210 

Which did refuse three thousand ducats of me 
And begg'd the ring ; the which I did deny him 
And suffer'd him to go displeased away ; 
Even he that did uphold the very life 
Of my dear friend. What should I say, sweet lady? 
I was enforced to send it after him ; 
I was beset with shame and courtesy ; 
My honour would not let ingratitude 
So much besmear it. Pardon me, good lady ; 

201. contain, retain. 

203. What man is there, etc. "Who is there so unreasonable (as to) 
have lacked good manners (to such an extent as) to press for a thing 
regarded by its owner as sacred?" 

217. beset with shame and courtesy, — 'shame' in refusing and 
'courtesy' the desire to show gratitude, a sense of what courtesy de- 
manded. 



ActV. Sc. i.] THE MERCHANT OP VENICE 153 

For, by these blessed candles of the night, 220 

Had you been there, I think you would have begg'd 
The ring of me to give the worthy doctor. 

Portia. Let not that doctor e'er come near my house : 
Since he hath got the jewel that I loved, 
And that which you did swear to keep for me, 
I will become as liberal as you ; 
I'll not deny him anything I have. 

Antonio. I am the unhappy subject of these quarrels. 

Portia. Sir, grieve not you ; you are welcome notwith- 
standing. 

Bassanio. Portia, forgive me this enforced wrong ; 240 
And, in the hearing of these many friends, 
I swear to thee, even by thine own fair eyes, 
Wherein I see myself — 

Portia. Mark you but that ! 

In both my eyes he doubly sees himself ; 
In each eye, one : swear by your double self, 
And there's an oath of credit. 

Bassanio. Nay, but hear me : 

Pardon this fault, and by my soul I swear 
I never more will break an oath with thee. 

Antonio. I once did lend my body for his wealth ; 
Which, but for him that had your husband's ring, 250 

Had quite miscarried : I dare be bound again, 
My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord 
Will never more break faith advisedly. 

Portia. Then you shall be his surety. Give him this 
And bid him keep it better than the other. 

Antonio. Here, Lord Bassanio ; swear to keep this ring. 

Bassanio. By heaven, it is the same I gave the doctor ! 

Portia. I had it of him. You are all amaz'd : 

249. for his wealth, for his weal, his well-being. 

250. Which, — the loan, that is, not the ' wealth.' 
233. advisedly, deliberately, knowingly. 



154 THE MERCHANT OP VENICE [Act V. Sc. i. 

Here is a letter ; read it at your leisure ; 

It comes from Padua, from Bellario : 

There you shall find that Portia was the doctor, 

Xerissa there her clerk : Lorenzo here 2?o 

Shall witness I set forth as soon as you 

And even but now return'd ; I have not yet 

Enter'd my house. Antonio, you are welcome ; 

And I have better news in store for you 

Than you expect : unseal this letter soon ; 

There you shall find three of your argosies 

Are richly come to harbour suddenly : 

You shall not know by what strange accident 

I chanced on this letter. 

Antonio. I am dumb. 

Bassanio. Were you the doctor and I knew you not ? 280 

Antonio. Sweet lady, you have given me life and living ; 
For here I read for certain that my ships 
Are safely come to road. 

Portia. How now, Lorenzo ! 

My clerk hath some good comforts too for you. 

Nerissa. Ay, and I'll give them him without a fee. 290 
There do I give to you and Jessica, 
From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift, 
After his death, of all he dies possess'd of. 

Lorenzo. Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way 
Of starved people. 

Portia. It is almost morning, 

And yet I am sure you are not satisfied 
Of these events at full. Let us go in ; 

297. Let us go in. " Shylock and his machinations being dismissed 
from our thoughts, and the rest of the dramatis personal assembled 
together at Belmont, all our interest and all our attention are riveted 
on Portia, and the conclusion leaves the most delightful impression 
on the fancy. The playful equivoque of the rings, the sportive trick 
she puts on her husband, and her thorough enjoyment of the jest, 



ActV.Se. i.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 155 

And charge us there upon inter'gatories, 

And we will answer all things faithfully. 299 

Gratiano. Well, while I live I'll fear no other- thing 
So sore as keeping safe Nerissa's ring. [Exeunt. 

which she checks just as it is proceeding beyond the bounds of pro- 
priety, show how little she was displeased by the sacrifice of her gift, 
and all are consistent with her bright and joyous spirit. In conclu- 
sion, when Portia invites her company to enter her palace to refresh 
themselves after their travels, and talk over ' these events at full,' the 
imagination, unwilling to lose sight of the brilliant group, follows 
them in gay procession from the lovely moonlit garden to marble 
halls and princely revels, to splendour and festive mirth, to love and 
happiness ! " (Mrs. Jameson). 



NOTES 



ACT I. 

Scene i. 

Venice. "In perusing this play we should keep constantly in mind 
the ideas which prevailed in England in the time of Shakespeare of the 
magnificence of Venice. Now, the name calls up ideas only of glory de- 
parted—' Her long life hath reached its final day ' ; but in the age of the 
poet Venice was gazed on with admiration by the people of every coun- 
try, and by none with more devotion than those of England. Her mer- 
chants were princes, — her palaces were adorned with the works of Titian, 
and she was, moreover, the seat of all pleasant delights — ' The pleasure- 
place of all festivity, The revel of the world, the masque of Italy.' Lew- 
kenor, Moryson, and other English travellers of the age of Shakespeare, 
have described Venice, including Coryat. who speaks of the palazzos of 
the merchants in the vicinity of the city, of the Eialto, and of the Ghetto, 
one of the islands on which the Jews lived, who were in number five or 
six thousand. He describes their dress ; those born in Italy wearing red 
hats, while the Eastern or Levantine Jews wore yellow turbans. The 
impression which the magnificence of Venice made upon this simple- 
minded but observant traveller may be judged of by the following pas- 
sage, which will at the same time serve to show how he became himself a 
butt for the sharp wits of his time, so that his merit as a traveller has 
been too much overlooked :— ' This incomparable city, this most beautiful 
Queen, this untainted Virgin, this Paradise, this Tempe, this rich diadem 
and most flourishing garland of Christendom, of which the inhabitants 
may as proudly vaunt as I have read the Persians have done of their 
Ormus, who say that if the world were a ring then should Ormus be the 
gem thereof, — the same, I say, may the Venetians speak of their city, and 
much more truly ' ; and he concludes with saying that ' if four of the 
richest manors in Somersetshire, where he was born, should have been 
bestowed upon him if he never saw Venice, he would say that seeing 
Venice was worth them all ' " (Hunter). 

The Merchant of Venice was presumably written about 1596 (Dowden). 
It was published twice in 1600 in quarto form and again in 1623, in the 
Folio, edited by Heminge and Condell, intended to be a complete edition 

157 



158 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. Sc. i. 

of Shakspere's plays. Upon these three texts, which do not always agree, 
are based the various modern composite, more or less amended, reading 
texts of the play. 

The present edition follows in general the Cambridge text — the lines 
numbered as in the ' Globe ' edition, which was used by Bartlett in his 
monumental Concordance to Shakespeare, the value whereof one cannot 
enough commend. 

5. I am to learn. " Ellipsis of ' under necessity ' " (Abbott, 405). 

8. ocean, — here trisyllabic. 

9. argosies. For the earlier forms of the word see the Century or Mur- 
ray's New English Dictionary. "No reference to the ship Argo is traceable 
in the early use of the word." — New English Dictionary. 

11. pageants. " The gild plays of England changed the station of the 
continental stage into a movable pageant, or platform, and instead of 
calling the population of a city to the stage, rolled the platform through 
the streets in orderly succession from audience to audience." — English 
Mystery Plays, Charles Davidson, printed by authority of Yale Univer- 
sity, 1892, p. 76. 

See also, for an account of the first ' pagiantes ' and a description of 
the machinery of the 'high scafolds,' Ward's History of English Dra- 
matic Literature, vol. i. p. 32. 

See also Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth, chapters xxx, xxxix. 

15. forth. Cf. i. 1. 143, "To find the other forth," and ii. 5. 11, "I 
am bid forth to supper." 

19. roads, 'road, a place near the shore where vessels may anchor, 
differing from a harbor in not being sheltered. Also called roadstead'— 
The Century Dictionary— Hampton Eoads, Va., for example, or Yarmouth 
Eoads, England. Cf. also v. 1. 260, "my ships Are safely come to 
road." 

33-34. spices . . . silks. A sentence in Sir Walter Scott's Tvanhoe 
(ch. x) was doubtless a reminiscence of these lines. . . . "when in the 
Gulf of Lyons, I flung over my merchandise to lighten the ship, — robed 
the seething billows in my choice silks — perfumed their briny foam with 
myrrh and aloes — " etc. 

35-36. worth this, . . . worth nothing. "The meaning is here 
obscure and the construction abrupt, if 'this' refers to the spices and 
silks just mentioned. Perhaps, as Mr. Lettsom conjectured, a line has 
been lost after silks. As the text stands, the actor may be supposed to 
complete the sense by a gesture, extending his arms" (Clarendon). 

41-45. Cf. i. 1. 177-179, and the letter to Bassanio, iii. 2. 317-321, "my 
creditors grow cruel," etc. 

50. two-headed Janus, — "as the god of the sun's rising and setting he 
had two faces, one looking to the east and the other to the west. His 
temple at Eome was kept open in time of war, and was closed only in the 
rare event of universal peace." 



Act I. Sc. ii.] 



NOTES 159 



55. in way of smile. " The was frequently omitted before a noun 
already denned by another noun, especially in prepositional phrases" 
(Abbott, 89). 

56. Nestor,— famous as the oldest councilor of the Greeks at the siege 
of Troy— very old and wise and grave. A jest that appealed to Nestor as 
laughable must then be laugbable indeed. 

69. ' polysyllabic names often receive but one accent at the end of the 
line in pronunciation ' (Abbott, 469). 

My lord' | Bassan' | io, since' | you have found' | Anto'nio. 
78. A stage. Cf. the development of this thought in a later play, As 
You Like It, ii. 7. 139-166, " All the world's a stage," etc. 

80. With,— 'here used causatively' (Furness), because of; that is, let 
the wrinkles of old age come because of mirth. See Furness further for 
illustrations of the belief in Shakspere's day that groans are ' mortifying,' 
death giving, and 'cool' the heart, "a spendthrift sigh, that hurts by 
easing," Hamlet, iv. 7. 123. The antithetical expression, "It warms the 
heart," "It warms the very sickness in my heart," Hamlet, iv. 7. 56, is 
still in common use. 

84. his grandsire cut in alabaster. Alabaster "was frequently used 
for tombs in the Elizabethan and Jacobean times. One magnificent 
specimen is in the north aisle of Stratford church, and may have sug- 
gested this simile to the poet." 

96. reputed wise for saying nothing. Cf. Prov. xvii. 28, ' Even a 
fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise : When he shutteth his 
lips, he is esteemed as prudent." 

116. You shall (may) seek all day. See Abbott, 315. 

139. oooasions,— here a quadrisyllable. 

150. As, for so, i. e., for I will so watch the aim. See Abbott, 110. 

170 a golden fleece. " The golden fleece was kept carefully guarded 
by the king of Colchos (properly Colchis), a country bordering on the 
Black Sea. A mythical Greek hero, Jason, with a band of brave men in 
his wonderful ship, the Argo, sailed in quest of it. By the aid of Medea, 
the daughter of the king, he succeeded in getting the treasure.' See a 
classical dictionary. 

Scene ii. 

50. as who should say, 'like (one) who should say' (Abbott, 257). 

53. the weeping philosopher, i. e., Heraclitus. 

77. proper man's picture. Furness quotes Allen's suggestion that 
this should be printed 'proper man's-picture,' and adds, "wherein I 
agree with him; in which case I think 'proper' is to be taken in the 
sense of very, just as it is in 'though our proper son stood in your ac- 
tion.'— Oth. I, iii, 84." 

135. The four strangers. Six have been mentioned. Possibly two 
were added after the play was first given, and the number here left un- 
changed—forgotten. 



160 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Sc. vii. 

Scene iii. 

42. " A ' fawning publican ' seems an odd combination. The Publicani 
or farmers of taxes under the Roman government were much more likely 
to treat the Jews with insolence than servility. Shakespeare perhaps 
only remembered that in the Gospels ' publicans and sinners ' are men- 
tioned together as objects of the hatred and contempt of the Pharisees" 
(Clarendon). 

But Moulton would give this line to Antonio. See Moulton, p. 62. 

ACT II. 

Scene i. 

19. His wife. ' His, her, &c. may stand as the antecedent of a rela- 
tive ' (Abbott, 218). 

31. alas the while ! — "a form of exclamation now obsolete, or nearly 
so. The speaker laments the circumstances in which he is placed at the 
present time. So Julius Caesar, i. 3. 82 : ' But, woe the while ! ' " Cf. 
Woe worth the day ! 

44. the temple, — "where the Prince was to take the oath. The men- 
tion of a temple instead of a church seems odd here. Perhaps Portia's 
Roman name led Shakespeare momentarily to forget that she was a Chris- 
tian, or the mention of Hercules and Lichas may have given his thoughts 
a classical turn" (Clarendon). 

Scene ii. 
167. a fairer table. For various readings and interpretations, see Fur- 
ness — if it seem worth the pains. 

Scene iv. 

40. shall be (i. e., is to be) my torch-bearer. See Abbott, 315. 

Scene v. 
25. Black-Monday. " In the 34 Edw. III. (1360) the 14 of April, & the 
morrow after Easter-day, K. Edwarcle, with his hoast, lay before the 
cittie of Paris ; which day was full darke of mist & haile, & so bitter cold, 
that many men died on their horses backs with the cold. Wherefore un- 
to this day it hath beene called the Blacke monday" (Stow, Chronicles). 

Scene vii. 
22. her virgin hue. " He says ' her ' of silver because he had already 
in mind 'virgin' as its analogue" (Allen, quoted by Furness). virgin, 
'pure, unsullied' (Deighton). 

41. Hyrcanian deserts,— Hyrcania, 'a district of indefinite extent 
south of the Caspian Sea, famous for tigers.' 



Act IV. So. L] NOTES 161 

Scene viii. 
33 You were best to tell. ' You ' is a dative mistaken for a nomina- 
tive. See Abbott, 230, on ' Ungrammatical remnants of ancient usage.' 
Cf. v. 1. 177. 

ACT III. 

Scene i. 

62 affeotions. " 'Affections,' wben contrasted witb 'passions,' seem 

to denote emotions produced tbrougb the senses by external objects. . . . 

Steevens quotes from Greene's Never Too Late : ' His heart was fuller of 

passions than bis eyes of affections ' " (Clarendon). 

89 Frankfort. " Tbere are two things which make this citie famous 
over all Europe. The one the election of the King of the Eomanes, the 
other the two noble fayres kept heere twise a yeare, which are called the 
Martes of Franckford " (Coryat's Crudities). 

Scene ii. 
89 "If there is anything that Shakespeare hated with a hatred some- 
what disproportionate to the triviality of the matter, a hatred which finds 
expression in every stage of his career, it is the use of rouge and false 
hair. Therefore he insists upon the fact that Portia's beauty owes 
nothing to art ; with others the case is different :— 
1 Look on beauty, 
And you shall see 'tis purchas'd by the weight.' " (Brandes, p. 160.) 
102 Hard food for Midas. " Midas had prayed that everything he 
touched might turn to gold, and found himself likely to be famished by 
the literal fulfilment of his prayer." 

222. Salanio, or possibly Salerio, as in the oldest texts. 

Scene iv. 
53 the tranect. "'Tranect,' which means nothing, is, of course, a 
misprint for ' traject,' an uncommon expression which the printers clearly 
did not understand. This, as Elze has pointed out, is simply the Venetian 
word traqhetto (Italian tragitto). How should Shakespeare have known 
either of* the word or the thing if he had not been on the spot? 
(Brandes, p. 116). 

ACT IV. 

Scene i. 

9. And that. That is redundant. See Abbott, 285. 

10. "Of Antonio we may say that in the main his life has been a 
practical embodiment of Mercy ; now, in his present extremity, he 
deserves Mercy. But he does not get it ; on the contrary, he hears the 

11 



162 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act V. Sc. i. 

cry, Revenge. Why? He has himself reared the avenger, it is his own 
deed coming back to him in that ominous shout. 

"At this point we must mark the side on which the character of Antonio 
shows its limitation ; inconsistency cuts it in twain, for, though generally 
merciful, he was unmerciful to the Jew, and thus wronged his own prin- 
ciple. The sight of the pitiless man, made him pitiless in requital ; he 
has berated, kicked, spit on Shylock in public ; he has educated the 
latter to vengeance. . . . Thus Shylock' s deed is engendered of Antonio's 
deed, which is now coming back to the latter armed with all the might of 
Venetian justice " (Snider, pp. 241-242). 

26. moiety. In the early texts this was printed 'nioytie.' "One of 
the many advantages of having the original text before us is that, as here, 
the spelling guides as to the scansion. We see at once that moiety is a 
dissyllable" (Furness). 

149. shall (is to) understand. See Abbott, 1 315. 

157. " Portia's success as an advocate cannot be pleaded as encouraging 
to ladies to enter the legal profession. It will be observed that she gets 
not only her garments but her notes from her cousin Doctor Bellario at 
Padua." — Shakspeare : the Man, Goldwin Smith, New York, 1900, p. 45. 

281. with all my heart. " A jest like this enhances the pathos. Men 
at the point of death have a natural tendency to beguile the misery of the 
time by playing upon words. Compare the death scene in King John, 
v. 7. So Shakespeare makes Gaunt jest on his name in Eichard II. ii. 
73 sqq. So also Sophocles makes Ajax 'play nicely with his name,' line 
430" (Clarendon*. 

ACT V . 

Scene i. 
59. patines of bright gold. See Furness for an opinion that these 
1 patines of bright gold ' are not the gold plates used in the celebration of 
the Lord's Supper, but fleecy " broken clouds, like flaky disks of curdled 
gold which slowly drift across the heavens, and veil at times the bright- 
ness of the moon." 

1 Many references have been given to Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar on 
the assumption that a copy of this indispensable work would be accessible to 
every student of the play. 

The publishers of the authorities quoted are in general given in the foot-notes. 
The citations from Bates, Clarendon, Deighton. Gummere, and Rolfe are from 
the excellent editions of this play by Professor Katherine Lee Bates, of Wellesley 
College ; Messrs. Clark and Wright, of Cambridge University ; K. Deighton, late 
principal of Agra College. British India ; Professor Gummere, of Haverford 
College ; and Dr. William J. Rolfe. These editions are published respectively 
by Sibley & Ducker, the Clarendon Press, The Macmillan Company, Longmans, 
Green & Co., and The American Book Company. 



Table op Acts and Scenes in which Each Character appears. 
Also, Number of Lines spoken by Each Character. Also, 
Grouping of Minor Characters to be read in a Reading 
Club by One Person. [Adapted from " How to Study Shake- 
speare," W. H. Fleming, New York, 1898.] 

No. of Lines. 

364 Sbylock, I, iii ; II, v ; III, i, iii ; IV, i. 

341 Bassanio, I, i, iii ; II, ii ; HI, " ; IV, i ; v , *• 

188 Antonio, I, i, iii ; II, vi ; III, iii ; IV, i ; V, i. 

188 Launcelot, II, ii, iii, iv, v ; III, v ; V, i. 

181 Lorenzo, I, i ; II, iv, vi ; III, ii, iv, v ; V, i. 

178 Gratiano, I, i ; II, ii, iv, vi ; III, ii ; IV, i, ii ; V, i. 

109 Salarino, I, i ; II, iv, vi, viii ; III, i, iii. 
103 Morocco, II, i, vii. 

66 Arragon, II, ix. 

83 Salanio, I, i ; II, iv, viii ; III, i, ii ; IV, i. 

57 Duke, IV, i. 

41 Old Gobbo, II, ii. 

18 Servant, I, ii ; II, ix ; III, i. 

16 Tubal, III, i. 

9 Musician, III, ii. 

8 Stepbano, V, i. 

2 Leonardo, II, ii. 

1 Baltbasar, III, iv. 

1 All, III, ii. 
589 Portia, I, ii ; II, i, vii, ix ; III, ii, iv ; IV, i, ii ; V, i. 

110 Nerissa, I, ii ; II, ix ; III, ii, iv ; IV, i, ii ; V, i. 
89 Jessica, II, iii, v, vi ; III, ii, iv, v ; V, i. 



Morocco. 


} 




Leonardo. 


Salanio. 


Old Gobbo. 


| Baltbasar. 






Tubal. 


> Stephano. 


Arragon. 


) 


Musician. 


) All. 


Duke. 


} 




Servant. 



EXEECISES m INTERPRETATION 



i. 1. 1. In sooth, I know not why I am so sad. 

What is the poetic atmosphere of this opening scene— tragic or 
divertingly comic? Is there or is there not a tragic key-note struck? 

Do the friends of Antonio appear to take his 'sadness' seriously? 
or on the contrary, as in reality due to the want of anything to be sad 
about-merely the care of the lavish gifts of fortune ? Is Salarino sad 
or merry here ? 

" Why, then you are in love. . . . 
Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad, 
Because you are not merry : and 'twere as easy 
For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry, 
Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus, 
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time." 
Within the first hundred lines the madcap wit-snapper Gratiano 
—parts that become thee happily enough, says Bassanio a little 
later— is accusing Antonio of ' putting on ' an appearance of melan- 
choly, of ' fishing ' for a reputation for wisdom with the bait of melan- 
choly.' What effect would these lines— spoken by a taking actor- 
have on the poetic atmosphere of the play? Does Gratiano V excel- 
lent foolery' intensify a presentiment of approaching disaster? or 
does it lighten the spirit of the play by attributing the marvellous 
change in Antonio to his ' wilful stillness ' in fishing for a reputation 
for wisdom with this bait of melancholy ? 

Cf. the feeling of the poet Swinburne that in the play as a whole 
"there is but very seldom, not more than once or twice at most, a 
shooting or passing gleam of anything more lurid or less lovely than 
' a light of laughing flowers ' " with the opinion of Professor Lounsbury 
that the very first words of the opening scene sound " the ominous note 
of impending evil." Cf. also with the opinions of Boas, Brandes, and 

Furness. 

165 



166 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act I. Sc. L 

" It is in reality one of those hypochondriacal seizures to which 
the favourites of fortune are at times subject, though here it serves as 
a presentiment of evil to come." — Boas, p. 220. 

" In Antonio, the royal merchant, who, amid all his fortune and 
splendour, is a victim to melancholy and spleen induced by forebod- 
ings of coming disaster," etc. — Brandes, p. 159. 1 

" But this play is not a Tragedy ; it is a Comedy, wherein a tragic 
key-note would be falsely struck. Witches and a blasted heath, a 
chilly rampart and a midnight ghost, — these are key-notes; but no 
irretrievable disaster is impending here." — Furness, p. 2. 

What, then, is the poetic atmosphere of this opening scene ? At 
the first reading of the play, would the reader at the close of the scene 
anticipate a tale of woe? or a heart-stirring account of a successful 
quest of the fair lady of wondrous virtues, who had already sent from 
her eyes fair speechless messages to one who is introduced to the 
reader as the most noble kinsman of the hero of the play 1 

i. 1. 1. I know not why I am so sad. In reading this line aloud 
should the greater emphasis fall on ' why ' or on ' sad ' % Is this line, 
that is, the first reference made in this group of friends to Antonio's 
sadness or is it the continuation of a conversation on the subject % And 
the sadness of Antonio being already known to his friends and com- 
mented on (' You say it wearies you '), is he here simply saying in 
conclusion, I know not why I am so sad ? The scene is introduced in 
this way, as a matter of course, to tell the reader about Antonio's 
sadness ? But is the reader chiefly interested in the fact of Antonio's 
sadness or the cause? 

For a presentation of the value of interpretative reading as a 
means of literary interpretation, see The Voice and Spiritual Educa- 
tion, by Professor Corson (The Macmillan Company). See also The 
Atlantic Monthly, June, 1895. 

i. 1. 62. Your worth is very dear in my regard. 

" The melancholy and self-sacrificing magnanimity of Antonio is 
affectingly sublime. Like a princely merchant, he is surrounded with 
a whole train of noble friends."— Schlegel, p. 389. 

" In the opening scene we see the dignified merchant-prince suf- 
fering under the infliction of frivolous visitors, to which his friend- 
ship with the young nobleman exposes him ; his tone throughout the 

1 But Brandes also says, referring to the trial-scene, "They [the Elizabethan 
audience] did not take him [Shylock] seriously enough to feel any real uneasi- 
ness as to Antonio's fate, since they knew beforehand the issue of the adven- 
ture.'" What, then, to an Elizabethan audience, was the significance of these 
' forebodings of coming disaster ' in the opening scene, to which Brandes refers 
above ? 



Act I. Se. liL] EXERCISES IN INTERPRETATION 167 

see smsft K^K« wttt£ " 

those on whom they are bestowed."-Moulton, p. 47. 

To the reader does Antonio appear to be ' surrounded by a whole 
train of noble friends' or 'suffering under the infliet.on of frivolous 
v sirs ' r Just what is there in the text, if anything, upon which the 
Zder can base an agreement either with Schlegel or wtth Moultonl 

i 3 95 Was this inserted to make interest good? 

The Merchant of J^^^XTJ^hm^to a Christian but 

current rate, namely, ten per cent. -Brande., p. 104. 

" This is the fool that lent out money gratis. 
"But Shakespeare himself did not belong to this class of fools. - 
Brandes, p. 160. 

« Tn thP matter of deriving profit from money lent, he [ShylockJ is 

to deplore."— Lounsbury, p. 335. 

But while reading the play is the reader presumed to feel the fool- 
ishness of this 'ignorant upholder' of a 'sentimental notion in 
regard to the taking of interest? or, on the contrary to appreciate 
the kindness of heart which led him to deliver from the forfeitures 
of the merciless usurer many that did at times make moan lo the 
Christian intercessor? 

Is the effect of the comment quoted above to help the reader to 
catch the spirit in which the play was written! to help him let his 
sympathies go where they were clearly expected to go when the play 
was written? Or does this comment, on the contrary, tend to support 
the second conception of Shylock rather than the first as given in the 
Introduction above? ,.,.,.,. u„+ 

The reader is presumed to read the play in the light of its age, but 
-having done so-what is the effect upon his satisfaction with the 
play if he is required by the spirit of the play to sympathize with an 
'ignorant upholder' of what are to him 'sentimental notions ? 
i. 3. 131. I am as like . . . To spit on thee again. 
« Antonio must be understood as a perfect character : for we must 
read the play in the light of its age, and intolerance was a mediaeval 
virtue."— Moulton, p. 47. 



168 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act II. Sc. i. 

. . . , " despite the princely elevation of his nature, Antonio is by 
no means faultless. He has insulted and baited Shylock in the most 
brutal fashion on account of his faith and his blood. We realize the 
ferocity and violence of the mediaeval prejudice against the Jews when 
we find a man of Antonio's magnanimity so entirely a slave to it. 
And when, with a little show of justice, he parades his loathing and 
contempt for Shylock's money-dealings, he strangely (as it seems to 
us) overlooks the fact that the Jews have been carefully excluded 
from all other means of livelihood, and have been systematically 
allowed to scrape together gold in order that their hoards may always 
be at hand when circumstances render it convenient to plunder 
them." — Brandes, p. 160. 

Was Antonio's treatment of Shylock displeasing to the lovely 
heroine, the author of that immortal plea for mercy ? to the Duke, 
the head of the Venetian State? to the audience of Shakspere's 
day? Which interpretation must be accepted, then, if the reader is 
to read the play in the light of its age ? But, though in this way 
only the spirit in which the play was written can be caught, how 
shall the play be read by the twentieth-century reader, to whom the 
good Antonio's anti-Jewish prejudices are an offense? 

ii. 1. 26. Sultan Solyman. This was Solyman the Magnificent, under 
whose rule the Turkish Empire reached its highest point. His con- 
quests over the Christian armies extended as far west as Hungary. 
He was a patron of learning and the arts and one of the ablest rulers 
of his country and his time. 

Might not the wielder of a scimitar that slew a Persian prince 
that won three fields of Solyman the Magnificent have easily, then, 
had Shakspere chosen, been made to win the love of Portia for the 
dangers he had passed through, as Othello won the love of Desde- 
mona and the approbation of the Duke, and of the reader of the 
play? 

" His frank warmth of heart and luxuriance of fancy, no less than 
his undisguised solicitude, not ill-founded, as to the effect of his 
dusky complexion, enlist for him a certain sympathy ; but he would 
be no more a fitting mate for the high-bred lady of Belmont than 
would that other splendid barbarian, 'Ligurge himself, the grete 
king of Thrace,' for the gentle Emelye." — Katherine Lee Bates. 

What justification is there in the text for this characterization of 
the Prince of Morocco as a ' splendid barbarian ' ? In any case is he 
more of a barbarian than ' the warlike Moor Othello ' ? And is not 
the gentle Desdemona, daughter of a senator of Venice, as high-bred 
a lady as the lady of Belmont ? Yet the reader approves, or is pre- 
sumed to approve, as dees the Duke of Venice, of the marriage of 
Othello and Desdemona ? 



Act II. Sc. vii.] EXERCISES IN INTERPRETATION 169 

Had Shakspere purposed to make the Prince of Morocco the 
successful suitor, would it have been necessary to change the por- 
trayal of the Prince greatly % or merely to omit certain hints to the 
reader as to the predestined hero of the caskets % 

Is there anything in the portrayal of the personal character of 
Bassanio, as thus far given, to win the reader's sympathy for him 
rather than for the Prince of Morocco'? — aside from the fact that the 
reader recalls that the lovely heroine remembers him well and 
remembers him as worthy of praise, and also that he is a kinsman of 
the good Antonio. 

Morocco is not wooing the heiress of Belmont merely because she 
is ' richly left ' I Indeed, as to this Elze has written, 

"In plain prose, Portia's father did not wish that she should 
become the prize of a wooer who should choose her for the sake of 
her gold and silver, one who should in marriage seek outward show 
not inward worth, one who should love her fortune not herself. 
And yet — strange contradiction ! — Bassanio it was who set out for 
Belmont on purpose to win the ' Golden Fleece ' ; while to the Princes 
of Arragon and Morocco, with their royal wealth, this mercenary 
motive could not be imputed." 

The love of the Prince of Morocco is properly brought out — 
"More than these in love I do deserve"? Is the reader, then, pre- 
sumed to be touched by his simple adieu, " I have too grieved a heart 
To take a tedious leave " % or, on the contrary, is his situation 
throughout ' comic ' to the reader as to Koenig? 

" Portia's assurance that he stood as fair as any other of her suit- 
ors conveys to us, who know what her feelings toward these others 
are, a keen satire, which becomes extremely comic when Morocco 
thanks her for it." — Koenig. 

Cf. the comment of ten Brink, given in the Introduction above, 
as to Shakspere's treatment of his characters in general— "all his 
characters are drawn with equal sympathy and with equal objective- 
ness"— and as to the reader's difficulty sometimes in maintaining 
" that obliviousness to the suffering of the comic victim so essential 
to the enjoyment of comedy." 

ii. 7. 78. A gentle riddance. In view of the poetry of Morocco's de- 
scription of the coming of suitors ' from the four corners of the earth ' 
to ' kiss this shrine, this mortal-breathing saint,' and the stress he lays 
on his love for her, and his evident deep feeling on his departure, 
" Portia, adieu. I have too grieved a heart To take a tedious leave," 
and in view of her assurance on his coming, " Yourself, renowned 
prince, then stood as fair As any comer I have look'd on yet For my 



170 THE MERCHANT OP VENICE [Act III. Sc. i. 

affection " — in view of all this is not her " A gentle riddance . . . Let 
all of his complexion choose me so," a trifle unsympathetic 1 At 
least her great admirer, the great Shakspere scholar who looks upon 
her as the most lovely of Shakspere's creations, could not well in this 
connection speak of " that sympathetic tenderness of hers which was 
like the gentle rain from heaven " % 
iii. 1. 134. meet me at our synagogue. 

" Shakespeare probably intended to add another shade of dark- 
ness to the character of Shylock, by making him still formally devout 
while meditating his horrible vengeance " (Clarendon). 

"The Jew invokes the Ancient of Days, who spoke unto Moses 
aforetime : ' If a man cause a blemish in his neighbour ; as he hath 
done, so shall it be done to him ; breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth 
for tooth ; as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done 
to him again.' In entering his synagogue Shylock entrusts his hatred 
to the safeguard of his Faith. Henceforth his vengeance assumes a 
consecrated character. His bloodthirstiness against the Christian 
becomes sacerdotal. The expiation of Anthonio is but a holocaust 
offered to the Omnipotent Avenger. Shylock is bound by irrevocable 
vows. And when he appears before the tribunal his bearing is the 
indomitable impassiveness of a priest about to sacrifice an expiatory 
lamb to the God of Sabaoth." — Francois Victor Hugo. 

Which of these interpretations is the better supported by the text 
and by the spirit of the play? Remembering that this line comes 
shortly after Shylock's unanswerable plea, Hath not a Jew eyes ? etc., 
that 'swollen gush of elemental human passion,' consider whether 'in 
this magnificent appeal Shakspere was, as Boas holds he was, some- 
what ' carried beyond himself by the irresistible sway of his own 
creation,' so that his treatment of Shylock here is to some extent in- 
consistent in that, with the entry of Tubal, Shylock ' sinks back* into 
the stony-hearted usurer.' 

If the reader feels with Boas that Shylock here sinks back into the 
stony-hearted usurer, he can also feel that Shakspere, in this scene 
with Tubal, is tickling the ears of the groundlings with a rehearsal of 
the dog Jew's agony over the loss of his gold ; he can feel that they 
were presumed to yell with vociferous laughter when Shylock ex- 
claimed, " Thou stickest a dagger in me : I shall never see my gold 
again." In this case the spectators would not be presumed to feel 
any pathos in Shylock's allusion to his dead wife, " it was my tur- 
quoise ; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor." 

What, then, was the effect intended by Shakspere in making Shy- 
lock say, " meet me at our synagogue " f 

See the Introduction, Shylock in Shakspere's Day. 



Act III. Sc. ii.] EXERCISES IN INTERPRETATION 171 

Furness holds that Shylock's oath is ■ hollow.' Referring to Shy- 
lock's ' pause ' toward the close of the trial-scene (Why doth the Jew 
pause?) Furness says, p. 223, 

" In this ' pause ' does Shakespeare intimate to us that the balance 
is trembling between Tragedy and Comedy? The choice between 
them lies in Shylock's power. Is he debating it? The end is not 
yet ; he can yet make that end Tragic, and I am rash enough to say 
that I am not altogether sure he should not so make it. . . . 
Nothing convinces me more clearly that this is not a ' tendenz-drama,' 
wherein is infused a subtle plea of toleration for the Jews, than that, 
instead of a Jewish Tragedy, Shylock suffers it to end as a Christian 
Comedy. Shylock had sworn by his holy Sabbath to fulfil the bond, 
and, if the representative of a race, no perjury must taint his soul : 
cureless ruin has fallen on him ; his life is gone, since there is no law 
for him in Venice ; a Christian, worse than if of the stock of Barra- 
bas, claims his daughter ; to his ancient grudge is added the curse of 
his nation ; since his fall, then, is inevitable, let him redeem his vow 
and drag down Anthonio with him. Anthonio's gushing blood will 
hide all former stains on the Jewish gaberdine. When, therefore, 
after the ' pause ' for making up his mind, Shylock drops the knife to 
clutch the money, we see that his oath was hollow, and that he is still 
willing to wear the badge of sufferance and to be footed over the 
threshold like a stranger cur. No one of course can say with assur- 
ance why at this dividing of the ways Shakespeare decided in favour 
of comedy. If he objected to the many corpses on the stage, he got 
well over that aversion by the time he had written Hamlet" 

iii. 2. 32-33. Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack, 
Where men enforced do speak anything. 

" At the very time when Shakespeare's actors were repeating these 
words at the Black Friars, or on the Bankside, the secret chambers of 
the Tower were actually echoing the groans of suspected persons who 
were subjected to this unreasonable mode of extorting information. 
Shakespeare must have known this, and I hope that it was because he 
knew it that he sent the thrilling words through the crowds that re- 
sorted to his theatre." — Hunter. 

"It is pleasant to find Shakespeare before his age in denouncing 
the futility of this barbarous method of extorting truth. He was old 
enough to remember the case of Francis Throckmorton in 1584 ; and 
that of Squires in 1598 was fresh in his mind " (Clarendon). 

Is Shakspere here 'denouncing' the futility of this barbarous 
method of extorting truth? Did these words 'thrill' his audience 
with thoughts of the rack and the thumb-screw ? On the contrary, 
are not Portia and Bassanio able to play with these terms because 
they do not vividly realize — here and now at least — their significance ? 
Is the horror realized, visualized, either by them or by the audience? 

Pleasant as it would be, then, to find Shakspere ' before his age ' 



172 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE [Act IV. Sc. i. 

in denouncing either the wretched mediaeval prejudice against the 
Jews or the futility of the barbarous water-cure method of extorting 
untruth, 1 may it not well be questioned whether the denunciation of 
either is found in this play? 

iii. 2. 107. And here choose I : joy be the consequence ! 

. . . , " on the third [Act], where the two lovers stand trembling 
before the inevitable choice, which in one moment must unite or sepa- 
rate them forever, Shakspeare has lavished all the charms of feeling — 
all the magic of poesy. We share in the rapture of Portia and Bas- 
sanio at the fortunate choice : we easily conceive why they are so fond 
of each other, for they are both most deserving of love."— Schlegel. 

"The love part of the play must of course be secondary, since 
Bassanio is a spendthrift, and cannot be made much of as a hero. 
Portia must be clever rather than— like her namesake in the Julius 
Ccesar— great, or we shall regret the match. So, after Shylock, 
Antonio appears to hold the author's artistic attention, and furnishes 
the work its name." — Sherman. 

" Bassanio's gift of language goes far to excuse his somewhat un- 
heroic conduct " (Bates)— this conduct of Bassanio's that to Professor 
Katherine Lee Bates is somewhat unheroic being his enterprise in 
getting clear of all his debts by an expedition after the golden fleece 
of a lady ' richly left.' 

Is there anything in the play or in the spirit of the play to justify 
any reflection on Bassanio's method of getting clear of all his debts'? 
On the contrary, is not this reflection — wholly justifiable though it be 
according to the twentieth-century point of view — clearly a modern 
scruple, and wholly out of accord with the spirit of the play ? 

See the Introduction, p. 34. 

iv. 1. 225. I pray you, let me look upon the bond. 

The reader who sees vividly with the eye of imagination the events 
here taking place will feel the lapse of a brief time after this line is 
spoken— intense moments "during which every spectator in court 
holds his breath and hears his heart beat as he follows the lawyer's eye 
down line after line." But, as Moulton has said, " It is of no avail ; at 
the end she can only repeat the useless offer of thrice the loan, with 
the effect of drawing from Shylock an oath that he will not give way." 

" An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven : 
Shall I lay perjury upon my soul? 
No, not for Venice." 

1 Cf. George Eliot's opinion, in Eomola, as to the value of the " confessions " 
wrung from Savonarola " by the agony of torture— agony that, in his sensitive 
frame, must quickly produce raving,"— confessions retracted when the torture 
ceased but reiterated upon a renewal of the torture. 



ActV.Sci.] EXERCISES IN INTERPRETATION 173 

What does the reader or spectator now expect I Has he recognized 
in Portia 'the signal of deliverance,' and, knowing that in some way 
not yet anticipated deliverance is to come, does the lengthening of 
the crisis whilst sentence is pronouncing become 'the dramatic beauty 
of suspense ' ? Or does he, on the contrary, feel that with the court s 
award of a pound of flesh Antonio's life is doomed? Does Bassamo 
appear to have vielded to the inevitable in his exclamation as to what 
he 'would' sacrifice-life, wife, and all the world-to deliver his 
friend 1 In short, does or does not the reader here anticipate a deliv- 

^cT the comment of Dr. Lewinthal, " Shylock does not receive the 
forfeit of his bond-did we not know it beforehand? He does not 
receive even the principal loaned-we had anticipated this too. is 
it because Dr. Lewinthal knows so well the treatment meted out to 
the Jew in every age and clime that he anticipates correctly the resa It 
of the trial? Or should every careful reader anticipate the result 
equally well ? Has he already recognized, that is, in Portia the signal 
of deliverance ? or is her ' Tarry a little ' a thrilling surprise ? 

Cf the opinion of Brandes, already quoted, that the Elizabethan 
audience did not feel ' any real uneasiness ' as to Antonio's fate. Cf. 
also the suggestion of Professor Lounsbury that the conclusion was 
presumably as well known to the audience as to the author-on 
account of previous treatments of the theme. But see the suggestion 
of Furness (p. 171 above) that the play might well have turned out a 
tragedy, and the feeling of ten Brink (quoted in the Introduction 
above) that the play ought to have turned out a tragedy. 
v i 62 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins. 
Does the reader who yields himself wholly to the spirit of the play 
dwell disapprovingly upon the legal quibble whereby the threatened 
tragedy was averted? or, on the contrary, rejoice unreservedly in the 
happy close, indifferent to the harsh justice-or injustice-meted out 
to Shylock, accepting the happiness, as Professor Gummere does, 
« without asking too nicely how it all came to pass" ? or as does Pro- 
fessor Brandl 1 of the University of Berlin, who speaks of Portias 
1 Solomon-like ' sentence ? ^^^ 

i Shakspere, Alois Brandl, Berlin, 1894. Professor Brandl has 
emphasized the humanity of Shylock, his love for his daughter, his 
desire for revenge for her abduction-a desire dearer to him than his 
ducats. Yet, savs Brandl, Shylock is no tragic hero-he yields to 
save his life, and Irving's portrayal is clearly unjustified. 



174 THE MERCHANT OP VENICE [Act V. Sc. i. 

But how shall the play be read by the reader who is unable to let 
his sympathies altogether go where he sees they are clearly expected 
to go? 

The proper attitude of the reader toward Shylock is, then, a 
* necessary question ' of the play. 

The importance of this attitude is recognized in the questions on 
this play frequently set at college-entrance examinations. As for 
example the following, given in substance : " Give an opinion of the 
treatment Shylock receives throughout the play " (Harvard) ; " Does 
Shakspere make us pity Shylock at last?" (Wesleyan); "Point out 
the means by which our sympathies are turned for or against Shy- 
lock" (Teachers College, Columbia); "Are there any passages or 
scenes in which your sympathy is with Shylock rather than with 
Antonio and his friends? If so, where and why?" (Vanderbilt); 
" What is the dramatic purpose of Antonio's intercession with Shy- 
lock after the time of the bond has expired?" (Teachers College); 
"Discuss Shylock's position as one of a persecuted race and as a 
money lender, and show its effect upon his character" (College- 
Entrance Examination Board). 



THE END 



'Book? recommended for the 1903, 1904. and 1905 

Examinations in English for College Entrance. 

FOR STUDY AND PRACTISE. 

Shakspere's Macbeth. Edited by Richard Jones, Ph. D., Professor 
of Literature, Vanderbilt University. 195 pages. 30 cents. 

Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. Edited by 
William I. Crane, Head of Department of English, Steele High School, 
Dayton, Ohio. 185 pages. 30 cents. 

Selections from Milton's Shorter Poems. Arranged in chrono- 
logical order and edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Frederic D. 
Nichols, Associate in English, University of Chicago. 25 cents. 

Macaulay's Essays on Milton and Addison. Edited by George 
B. Aiton, A. M., State Inspector of High Schools, Minnesota. 25 cents. 

FOR READING AND PRACTISE. 
Shakspere's Merchant Of Venice. Edited, with Introduction and 

Notes, by Richard Jones, Ph.D., Professor of Literature, Vanderbilt 

University, Nashville, Tenn. Cloth, 30 cents. 
Shakspere's Julius CsBsar. Edited by W. H. McDougal, Head of 

Department of English in the Belmont School for Boys, Belmont, Cal. 

Cloth, 30 cents. 
The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers from the "Spectator." 

Edited by Franklin T. Baker, A. M., Professor of English in Teachers* 

College, Columbia University. 30 cents. 
Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. 
Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Other Poems. 

Edited with an Introduction, and with Notes to the Ancient Mariner, by 

Pelham Edgar, B. A., Ph. D., Associate Professor of French, Victoria 

College, University of Toronto. 25 cents. 

Scott's Ivanhoe. 

Carlyle's Essay on Burns. 

Tennvson's The Princess. Edited by Franklin T. Baker, A. M., 

Professor of English in Teachers' College, Columbia University. 25 cents. 
George Eliot's Silas Marner. Edited by J Rose Colby , Ph. D 

Professor of Literature, Illinois State Normal University, and Richard 

Jones, Ph. D. 30 cents. 
Lowell's Vision of Sir Eaunfal. Not included in the Twentieth 

Century Text-Book list. 

For 1906, 1907. and 1908. 
FOR STUDY AND PRACTISE. 

Shakspere's Julius C^sar ; Milton's Shorter Poems ; Macaulay's Essays on John- 
son and Addison ; Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. 
FOR R-EADING AND PRACTISE. 

Shakspere's Merchant of Venice ; Sir Roger de Coverley Papers ; *™"f*™Z°\ 
Goldsmith ; Coleridge's Ancient Manner; Scott's Ivanhoe and the Lady of ^ Lake , 
Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, Launcelot and Elaine, and The Passing ot Artnur , 
Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal ; George Eho t s Silas Marner. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK, BOSTON, CHICAGO. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ENGLISH TEXTS. 



LIST 
Shakspere's Macbeth. 

Edited by Richard Jones, Ph. D., Vanderbilt University. 
30 cents. 

The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. 

Edited by Franklin T. Baker, A. M., Columbia University. 
30 cents. 

Macaulay's Essays on Milton and Addison. 

Edited by George B. Aiton, A. M., State Inspector of High 
Schools, Minnesota. 25 cents. 

Selections from Milton's Shorter Poems. 

Edited by Frederic D. Nichols, University of Chicago. 
25 cents. 

Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. 

Edited by George M. Marshall, Ph. B., University of Utah. 
25 cents. 

George Eliot's Silas Marner. 

Edited by J. Rose Colby, Ph. D., Illinois State Normal Uni- 
versity, and Richard Jones, Ph. D. 30 cents. 

Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. 

Edited by W. I. Crane, Steele High School, Dayton, Ohio. 30 cts. 

Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 

By Pelham Edgar, B. A., Ph. D., Victoria College. 25 cents. 

Shakspere's The Merchant of Venice. 

Edited by Richard Jones, Ph. D. 30 cents. 

Tennyson's The Princess. 

Edited by Franklin T. Baker, Columbia University. 25 cents. 
Send for large circulars and sample pages of Twentieth Century 
Text-Books now ready. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



JAN 13 1903 



